A Roar: it is 
truth itself 
stepped among 
mankind,
right into the
metaphor-flurry

Paul Celan

I am a Los Angeles based artist and poet and my paintings and drawings have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in the United States, Canada, and Italy. I was born in Erie, Pennsylvania and moved annually as a child about the Eastern and Midwestern United States and traveled frequently, usually camping, all over the US and Canada. I was a natural autodidact, insatiably curious about many fields of knowledge. Such explorations led eventually to my embrace of my innate passions for science and art. Stress-induced hallucinations and synaesthesia experienced for decades helped fuel my interest in meditation and the nature of perception, and contributed to my openness to visual thinking.

I spent seven years in radio beginning when I was fourteen managing my high school radio station (prompted, in part, by building a stereo from scratch when I was 10 and building a computer in high school), while working as night manager of an Amoco service station to earn money for college. My studies were grounded in physics and forged through philosophy before finally rejecting a lucrative job offer in television and quitting an early career in commercial design and deciding to be an artist. During and after graduate school I lived and painted for twenty years in a loft in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood, later moving to an 19th century farmhouse near Athens, Georgia, an authentic log home in the woods near Providence, Rhode Island, and, most recently, relocating to California where I live and work at the edge of Angeles National Forest. I have taught as well, both studio art and art history, at The Art Institute of Chicago, Columbia College Chicago, Emory University, The University of Georgia, and other institutions. Such work provided opportunities to travel throughout Italy and France and China and elsewhere, teaching painting and drawing, and lecturing on art history and theory.

My interests range through many disciplines—astrophysics and neurobiology, psychology and philosophy, poetry and art history—all serving as shaping influences upon my work. In addition to now working full time as a painter, I enjoy traveling, hiking, trail-running, and foraging for wild edible mushrooms, gardening, cooking, wine, swimming in the sea, and sharing this extraordinary life with my wife and our family.

 
 
Lecturing, apparently, even as a baby

Lecturing, apparently, even as a baby