Many people recall childhood interests in drawing or painting accompanied by dreams of some day becoming an artist. A few lucky ones develop skills under the mentorship of a close artist relative or family acquaintance.

As a youth growing up in a small farming community in south-central Illinois I showed no particular artistic inclination. The community offered no sources of artistic inspiration–no art museums, galleries, not even an art class in school.

In early elementary grades I dutifully colored within the lines of my coloring books, as instructed, and in high school doodled sketches of "cool" sports cars of tomorrow. No real evidence of an artistic bent there.

In college, following the footsteps of my most inspiring teacher, I majored in English and minored in journalism and history. One term I took the only formal art course I've ever had. The class worked in watercolor and painted nothing but seedpods for twelve weeks. I learned an important lesson. I discovered that there is art in the seemingly mundane and that the possibilities are limitless. I came to realize that it is not so much the subject that makes a good painting--- it is how the artist interprets the subject. A small painting of a tree in misty morning light can be as arresting as a giant, detailed painting of the Grand Canyon.

For several years I taught English and journalism at the secondary school level, then became a bureaucrat for the Illinois Department of Human Services. During my years with that agency I married and raised a family.

My interest in the visual arts found first expression in photography. For a dozen years or so I pursued photography as a serious hobby. I was especially interested in creative /casual portraiture. Even today I am most comfortable composing prospective paintings through the viewfinder of a camera.

I do not know where I got the notion that I wanted to paint. Whatever the motivating source, within weeks of retiring, I purchased my first how-to-paint book (The Big Book of Painting Nature in Oil by S. Allyn Schaeffer), which continues to get me out of some problematic situations. And within three months of retiring I was on a plane bound for Maui to decide if the island would become my new home. (I had vacationed in Maui three times, but now would decide if I should move there permanently.)

I suppose one would say I am self-taught, if there really is such a process. We unconsciously learn so much from images and impressions all around us and nothing in the vacuum of isolation.

I pour over art magazines and books and have learned a lot from them. I visit galleries whenever possible. I have participated in three workshops at the Hui No'eau, Maui's exceptonal visual arts center. My workshop instructors have included such notables as mainland artist Hope Stevenson, internationally renown plein aire artist Kevin McPherson and premiere Maui painter Ronaldo Macedo.

Photographs are often reference source for my paintings and enable me to experience again the many moods of nature and the people of Maui. I prefer to paint Mother Nature as she is–without excessive embellishment or distortion of her colors or forms. I hope to arrest the jaded eye to contemplate and appreciate for a moment Mother Nature without makeup.