With a lifelong multidisciplinary approach to fixating on projects, I’ve had my fingers in a lot of pots. Most of those pots are here for you to snoop around in and I’m adding more stuff all the time.

I got started painting around age 13 the same way the classic Renaissance masters did: a portrait of Iron Maiden’s mascot Eddie with borrowed paints and brushes. Subsequent work was heavily influenced by Pre-Raphaelite artists and death metal album covers, also an exact facsimile of the Renaissance masters. I stopped painting around age 20 to pursue endeavors in music and filmmaking, both of which died wriggling, painful deaths after dedicated pursuit over thirty years. So why not pick up painting again at age 45? 

In this second chapter of painting I’m being more deliberate in choosing images that mean something to me on a deeper level than “this looks neat”, though neat looking things still appeal. People I’ve known, places I’ve been, photos I’ve taken, single frames from the movie of my life and lineage. There’s also an interest in that spark you get when entering a gallery of paintings and one immediately makes you say “ooh” and you walk over to it. Doesn’t matter what it is, there’s usually one that elicits an “ooh” and if I can make even one painting like that then I’ll consider my work a success. Honestly that’s about as deep as I like to outwardly get about the stuff I’m painting. I can describe what a piece is, but I won’t ever say what it means because that interrupts the unique conversation every piece of art has with every individual viewer.

My family has deep roots in Seattle, both lines having moved here in the late 19th century. My great-great grandfather was the Ballard postmaster in 1902. My mother’s family operated the most successful sausage company in the city in the pre-depression era (Jilg Sausage Co). My great uncle on my father’s side put the first paint job on the Space Needle and my grandfather on the other side worked for the ‘62 World’s Fair and took photos of the Needle from a plane on opening weekend. I’ve lived in the area since birth and in the same house on the South side of town for 25 years with no plans of leaving. Seattle is home.

I’ve been a fine artist, photographer, musician, videographer, editor, CGI artist, screenwriter, filmmaker, carpenter and came back to being a fine artist. Life’s been a strange, meandering path of creation and here’s where I’ll try to arrange as much as I can for anybody to see.

Other than all that I mostly think about Huey Lewis and the News and hot dogs.