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| My parents, in a happier time. |
Born in Portland, Oregon, I grew up in very difficult times and outside the mainstream of America. My family was often homeless due to alcohol and drugs, and our lives often seemed to wallow in violence and addiction. We lived in a car a lot, and so there’s a family joke about being from Bel Air … but in our case, it was a 1956 Chevy Bel Air, copper and cream-colored. I slept on the back window deck when I was little. At some point after one of my sisters escaped, I graduated to sleeping on the back seat.
Perhaps my never-ending search for the meaning of existence stems from those times. Or perhaps it comes from being the progeny of extremely brilliant but emotionally unstable people - being in my own way crazy as they were. In any case, my dramatic early life shaped who I am and the stories themselves can be rather hard to stomach for some, but this page is about my art, not my suffering. I have tried to overcome all of the bad things and while some things hang with me, I prefer to NOT dwell on them.
I started painting prolifically about age four. Of course, when your family is often homeless you aren’t an artist, you’re a vandal. I painted on walls - other people’s walls - because that’s all there was. So I was also taught at an early age that painting was bad. It took me a long time to learn differently. By age for or so I had figured out that pieces of asphalt could be used to make marks on any kind of wall. If I didn’t draw with pieces of asphalt, I chewed them. I liked the taste and besides there often wasn’t enough food.
I drew and painted landscapes in addition to abstracts that should have been scary to myself and others. Art was my escape from this world and having been forced out of wall-based art and once I got into school, I showed some early promise. As a child I spent every free moment drawing and painting. At that age art may have been an anesthetic but it never crossed my mind to make it a career. If I had thought of such a thing I’m sure I would have been told it was a stupid idea.
In Junior High we went through some testing and somehow they got the idea that I was “gifted”, which made them insistent that my mother get counseling for me in order to understand why I was under-performing. At this point we actually went to a therapist in Portland for one session. I don’t remember much about it other than my mother yelling a lot. That was the end of that.
During my teens I became very interested in spirituality and psychic phenomena. I read voraciously and took correspondence courses whenever I could find them.
Well, everyone has to make a living and so I became a commercial fishing boat captain at 18. I found it mind-numbingly boring even though I liked the solitude of the sea, so at 19 I went to college. I attended Eastern Oregon and majored in Sociology with a minor in music. Later I went to Clatsop for a Law Enforcement major. Then I attended Northwest Bible College. When I needed some more job skills, I attended Western Medical College. There was a period where I pastored a church. I kind of gave up on the normal world at some point and became a roaming philosopher. If you wondered what a roaming philosopher does: Counsel people, help with problems, be the shoulder everyone cries on and the adviser everyone seeks out. It doesn’t pay anything but the world needs such people.
Art continues to be both therapeutic and a source of meaning and fulfillment. My abstractions may be full of chaos and violence with paint - when you think about it, we find the very definition of my existence. It is important to understand this duality of source in my work: First is the expression of impermanence and injustice we see in the world and my need to give it greater permanence by preservation in paint; and second, the inner chaos of life, that which is beyond words or rationality, translated to paint.
So where are we? From here, my intention is to continue with my work in abstract work, as well as keeping my street creds as a generalist and painter of Oregon. And should you be wondering, I will not let down those who have invested in my work. I feel I owe it to those who collect my work to do everything I can to ensure future value. People who choose to own my art are my family. So I will keep painting.
Am I a successful artist? Success is often highly-relative, and art is a career where success is something of a delusion than a realty. Nevertheless, I have a gallery that represents me and a few collectors who seem to love my work. Homeless no longer, I often prefer to feel the freedom of the road. For me, home is where my art is.
