Artist Bio Although there are many things I love to do, Art is more like something I am. I draw the way most people breathe.

I was born in 1960 and grew up Texan in the Dallas area. I`m sure I was just emulating my brother, Hollis, when I first started drawing. We are separated in age by twenty years with two sisters between us. He worked as a draftsman for an aerospace firm in north Dallas by the time I was crawling age. I used to lay on the floor under his drafting table and draw while he worked. He replenished my paper supply with end trimmings from large print jobs at his office.

In school, it was quickly apparent I would never be friendly with structured academics. Class time was spent drawing. By the time I entered high school, I began showing work in local exhibitions and producing short animated films with friends. Though producing little in the way of scholastic achievment, my artwork drew notice from retired Disney artist, Dick Rule. He brought my work to the attention of the training department at Walt Disney Feature Animation in Los Angeles where I was offered an internship to do feature films with the understanding I first graduate high school.

By this time, Hollis had built a very successful career as a sculptor in Colorado. Having spent several summers working with him in the studio and bronze casting foundry, I had developed romantic notions about moving to Denver instead of LA. After a couple of disappointing semesters in liberal arts school, I packed my truck and moved to Denver in the summer of 1980 to work for Hollis full time.

This was a real renaissance time for me. With my brother as a constant mentor, I began to seriously study with artists to whose work I had aspired growing up. Ned Jacob, Jon Zahourek, Len Chmiel, Kang Cho, Bob Kuhn, Richard Schmid and Skip Whitcomb, as well as Hollis, all helped to mould my tastes and attitude. There were others to a lesser degree, but these guys all had the opportunity to spank my hands in person. I owe them all my heart-felt gratitude. Soon, I was exhibiting work in galleries and shows throughout the west.

The volume of Hollis` work soon made it neccessary to live closer to the foundry. We packed his studio and moved to Loveland in 1982. Within the first couple of weeks of our arrival, I met this amazing girl named Paula who was bagging my groceries at the local supermarket. It wasn`t long before she was un-bagging them and cooking them as well.

Buy this time, it was apparent that oil, watercolor and intaglio printmaking were going to be my primary mediums. I was painting a lot of plein air landscapes and wildlife subjects. A friend visiting from Florida signed me up for scuba lessons at a local dive shop and changed my painting direction subjectively for the next six years. I was soon painting marine wildlife almost exclusively.

I married my girl in 1988 and moved into an industrial building near the Loveland Academy of Fine Arts where I began teaching workshops in painting and drawing. My marine paintings secured a membership for me with the Society of Animal Artists in New York in 1994. I began showing in national exhibitions and spending a good deal of time traveling to dive locations and gathering material for new artwork.

As a result of one of these trips to Florida, opportunity knocked a second time when I was offered an internship with Walt Disney Feature Animation, this time at their studio in Orlando. I signed on in September of 1995 and at the end of a thirteen week internship, was put to work on the last few weeks of production for "The Hunchback of Notre Dame." The following eight years were joyfully spent animating on feature films for the Mouse Gestapo. My film credits there also include: "Mulan", "John Henry", "Atlantis: the Lost Empire", "Lilo & Stitch", and "Brother Bear".

In spite of the intense work schedule at the Mouse, I continued to show work with a variety of national exhibitions such as "Birds in Art" in  Wausau, Wisconsin. Florida offered a completely unique plein air experience and the animation studio provided a group of very fine painters with whom to enjoy it. When Disney shut down its Florida studio permanently in 2003, I went back to painting full time and playing guitar in the evenings.

Although marine animals no longer dominate my subject matter, I still paint a great deal of animals and landscapes with the occasional figure or portrait. What I paint feels less important to me now than the active meditation of simply continuing to do it.

At the beginning of 2007, my wife and I, and our two dogs, Frank and Ollie, left the sunny beaches in Florida and are now residing in the Texas hill country among the cactus and armadillos. Coming back to Texas has slipped on like an old comfortable shoe. I have a great new studio space and have hit the floor running with several new pieces dedicated to the 2007 show season. With so many new, unforeseen changes in my life since the begining of this year, I have some big changes planned for my work as well.

I'm affraid anyone hoping for a profound artist's statement at this point is out of luck. I'm sure that eventually I'll come up with some inane adjectives to describe my artwork for the sake of marketting, but for now, I'm going to allow the work to speak for itself. If you find that it speaks to you, the artist statement is unnecessary.