I was born in July of 1957. I started drawing around the age of five or six, and started painting a few years later. By age 16, I had used most of the major mediums including: Pencil, Charcoal, Pen & Ink, Colored Inks, Tempera (water based), Chalk Pastels, Acrylics, Oils and Watercolor. I used all of these mediums on paper, as well as Acrylics and Oils on canvas. For the next ten years, I put art on the back burner to pursue other things, mostly associated with natural resources like a BS in Forestry From Clemson University with the ultimate objective of getting into Wildlife Biology and Ecology.

At age 27, in the midst of a five-year stint with the South Carolina Park System, I restarted my art career mostly with Pencil, Pen & Ink, and Pen & Ink Washes as a precursor to a full-fledged effort in Watercolor. In my earlier years I had been very Photo Realism/Detail oriented, gearing up for that type of work. At this point, however, I became much more "Painterly" and Impressionistic, but still using detail when and where I thought necessary, though a bit more than many watercolorists.

There is a saying in art, that "the better you know your subject matter the better an artist it makes you." Thanks to many visits to the nation's national parks, my ranger work, and work in Soil Conservation (Soil Conservation Service), Environmental Toxicology (Clemson University), Forestry (industrial & US Forest Service), Water Quality Monitoring (private lab) and Wildlife Photography, I feel I see naturalistic scenes far more clearly than I would otherwise. This helps me to more accurately convey to the viewer my interpretation of what it would be like to stand there and see that particular scene.