About

Painting

I began oil painting in 1970.  During my senior year at the University of Santa Clara I took art lessons from Luis Busta in San Mateo.  Luis was a classically trained artist that felt that students should spend at least one year drawing in charcoal before starting to paint in oils.  However, after I had successfully completed several charcoal drawings, Luis agreed to teach me oil painting, well before the one-year period had elapsed.

Luis Busta emphasized palette knife painting techniques.  He had a hands-on style of teaching.  If a student made a mistake, Luis would step in, take the student's palette knife, and demonstrate how to fix the problem directly on the student's canvas.  This was a very effective way for the students to learn palette knife painting techniques quickly and effectively.  However, it did require that the students be flexible and be receptive to constructive criticism.

After graduation, I attended the U.S. Naval Officer Candidate School in Newport, Rhode Island.  I was commissioned as an Ensign in the United States Naval Reserve and assigned to a teaching position at the Great Lakes Naval Base near Chicago.  This enabled me to visit the Art Institute of Chicago frequently and study the work of the French Impressionist painters.

After studying the paintings of Claude Monet, I transitioned to painting with brushes and restricted my use of the palette knife.  This represented a complete break from the style of painting that I had originally learned from Luis Busta.  During my time at Great Lakes, I painted commissioned works in the impressionistic style.  This provided the foundation for my future work.

My interest in impressionist painting was rekindled with my discovery of the California Impressionist movement, which spanned the years from 1890 to 1930.  The artists in this movement were passionate about painting outdoors directly from life and produced many wonderful California landscape paintings.  Many excellent examples of these paintings are currently on display at The Irvine Museum.

My current work is based on the use of plein air painting techniques for the initial phase of a painting.  Painting outdoors requires a different approach from painting in a studio environment.  Therefore, I have adapted my techniques and materials for plein air painting.

My goal is to complete the under-painting of a painting during a plein air session.  The emphasis during this first phase is to establish the basic composition, capture key colors for later reference, and completely cover the canvas.  The painting is then taken back to the studio for additional work.  This is very similar to the approach used by Claude Monet.

After the under-painting is dry to the touch, any necessary corrections to the composition are made.  One of the primary goals of the second phase is to ensure that there is a full range of values from the darkest dark to the lightest light.  In addition, the overall color scheme for the painting is established, based upon the information recorded during the initial plein air session.

After the paint has dried adequately from the second phase, the third and final phase is initiated.  In this phase, necessary details are added, with emphasis given to the primary point of interest.  Transparent glazes are used to harmonize and unify the colors in the painting.

When the painting is complete, it is signed.  After the paint has thoroughly dried (which takes about 6 months) the painting is varnished.  This will ensure that it will last for many generations.

Photography

I began my work in serious photography in 1967.  Since that time I have traveled extensively, creating photographs of subjects located both domestically and abroad.  My photographs adhere to the West Coast tradition in fine art photography.

Two important goals of photography, as an artistic medium, are mastery of photographic composition and mastery of photographic technique.  In order to achieve these goals, I have studied with some of the prominent individuals in art and photography including: 

• Ansel Adams
• Morley Baer
• Dorr Bothwell
• Wynn Bullock
• Henry Gilpin
• Clarence John Laughlin
• Jerry Uelsmann
• Al Weber

In 2015 I went on photography trips to the Galapagos Islands, Florida, Hawaii, and Yosemite.  These trips resulted in many fine photographs in both the digital format and on B&W film.  I plan to create prints of some of these photographs for exhibition at a later point in time.

For B&W photography, my preference is to create B&W silver gelatin prints using traditional darkroom techniques.  I find it very enjoyable to create fine art B&W prints in my darkroom.  The B&W prints are processed to archival standards and selenium toned in accordance with the "new" archival process using the LegacyPro EcoPro line of products.

For color photography, I use a full-frame Nikon DSLR camera.  This camera is backward compatible with all of my Nikon lenses.  This means that I can carry the DSLR camera and a traditional film-based SLR camera and share my lenses between both cameras.  This is tremendously convenient and reduces the size and weight of my camera outfit.

I use Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC to catalog and organize my digital photographs.  I use Adobe Photoshop CC to post-process the digital images either for distribution in digital form or for producing fine art prints for display.