After having many jobs that people would call a career, hating them and counting every hour, I finally found what I was put on the earth to do. And that is to paint. I strive to create an atmosphere of strong contrasting light, framed in a background of gritty urban scenes I like to call Urban Noir. I’ve found that the most important part of painting is making the viewer believe that the light your portraying is real. I strive to take snapshots of my life and put the viewer in that moment. And I want the viewer to feel emotion. The greater the degree of feeling I create, the more successful I feel the painting is.

I was born in Seattle and spent most of my life here. I got my start in art doing cartoons and briefly drew a comic strip for the Cooper Point Journal at The Evergreen State College. I then went to Americorps for a year and finished up schooling at Washington State University. I was also in the Coast Guard and used my GI Bill to begin work on my masters at San Diego State University, but never finished. I slowly became less and less involved in Art. But having suffered some major losses involving family members, I began using art to as a way to release pain. It worked very well, and I painted and painted until I realized that I was obsessed with painting, but felt that I didn’t have the skills to truly express myself. It was when I decided to go to the Gage Academy of Art on Capitol Hill. I called and found that the classical program was filled and I had waited too long (school was just about to start). I had heard of the MKOH (Mark Kang‐O’Higgins) atelier, a different program with less emphasis on classical studies and more on modern art, and to my surprise, one spot was still available. Perfect right? I joined and spent three years learning that I knew absolutely nothing about art. But I learned the skills that I needed to begin to learn. And I am happy to say that art is the greatest endeavor, next to being a father, that I could possibly take on.