ART BIOGRAPHY

For me, making art is about being in the moment of creation. Any thoughts or theories I might have are ultimately just what I need to keep me interested in coming back to that simple moment of splashing some paint at a blank canvas. Being in the raw flow of creativity is next to being totally unbound.

I’ve been busy doing art since I was a child. My first teacher was my father. He was an animator from the old school of animation. Starting at Disney as an apprentice in 1954, he went on to work at all the major studios of his day and do all of the jobs an artist can do in animation. I learned drawing and all the fundamentals of art from my dad.

As a young person I became involved with the artist Menlo Macfarlane, who became my second mentor. Menlo is a visual artist who came out of dance and the performing arts. His painting is just a part of his elaborate story telling and often relates to writing and performance pieces. With Menlo I developed a deeper sense of abstract composition as well as the underlying narratives in art. Together with artist Douglas Truth, we formed a group called The Black Valley. We collaborated on art and writing, putting on lots of small art shows and performances, while wearing an awful lot of costumes.

Reese Sutfin was a working muralist who joined our gang. He had come out of the film industry in Los Angeles as a makeup artist doing prosthetics for horror films including “Army of Darkness”. Reese is a painter with the mind of a mad scientist. From him, I learned the mechanics of art; colour theory, perspective, an understanding of paints, mediums, glazes, and varnishes. I gained a knowledge of materials and surfaces relevant to outdoor mural work.

These three apprenticeships were the bulk of my training. Since then, I’ve shown work at the Canessa Gallery in San Francisco, The Pamela Skinner Gallery in Sacramento, and at Phil’s Space in Santa Fe. I have done artwork for grant projects including “A Landscape Full of Stories” and “Oak Tree Remembered” through California Humanities. Most of all I have done small art shows in homes and cafes. In addition to doing my own artwork, I work as a designer and muralist for Sutfin Art Industries and do some freelance art for film and television.