My work is strongly rooted in the natural world. I’m always searching for the images that reflect the soul of the places of my memory. Sometimes this leads me in a more realistic direction, sometimes the work is more abstract; sometimes I paint furiously, others painstakingly. I’m a passionate fly angler, distance hiker, and outdoor enthusiast and those passions provide a rich visual vocabulary from which I draw for much of my work.

Over the years, my work has coalesced into a few main themes; landscapes and fish. In my landscape work, I try to capture the mood of a place through a somewhat impressionistic approach. I paint plein aire, but much of my work in the studio draws from sketches, my own photography, and improvisation. My fish and fishing related art has several branches of style. I have developed a large body of work where I paint fish in a more classical “portrait” style. These are my way of capturing the jewel like beauty of these incredible animals. I also explore the colors of the fish that I catch with more abstract works. These works range from close up detailed studies of scale patterns to wildly expressionistic pattern explorations. After living in Eastern Europe for a short time, I became fascinated with the use of gold leaf and have incorporated it into many of my works.

For my day job, I’m a middle school Art teacher in Minneapolis.

Most of my techniques are self-taught, however I did study art at Concordia College in Moorhead, MN and earned my Masters of Art Education from the University of Minnesota.

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