How long have you been drawing and painting?

I've drawn or painted for as long as I can remember. At age six my Mom bought me a copy of "How to Draw the Marvel Way" and I've voracioiusly consumed art books ever since. I'm still grateful to John Buscema's book for teaching me perspective so young.

During college, I took a wonderful watercolor class at Jacksonville State University from Mr. Gee. It got me started painting in earnest and I later took Painting I at the University of Alabama. After college, I took a several drawing and painting courses at various Dallas community colleges. One class was taught by Dave Brown and he invited me to the Friday Night Life Drawing Group at Synapse Studios. I was a regular at the Friday night group, and eventually started my own weekly life drawing group in my own studio in Dallas, Three Martini Studios. The Sunday sessions to 8 hours and it helped my skill immensely. I was fortunate to have a great group of artists join me each week and we made art (and drank a few martinis) for over five years.

Steve Armes introduced me to landscape painting, and I took this up with my close friend John Kuehne. I always thought that landscape painting would be much easier than figure drawing and painting. I was proven dead wrong the first time I went out. I did some very, very bad paintings that year and the challenge inspired me. I read everything I could on landscape painting, with John Carlson's "Elementary Principles of Landscape Painting" as my bible. John and I went on many excursions and learned together, with a lot of help from Steve. Somewhere along the way I discovered that plein air painting was my passion and it surprised me greatly as it overtook what I thought was my number one passion of drawing the figure. I still love drawing and painting people and various other subjects. But my greatest pleasure is when I'm observing and expressing the wonderful environment that we live in, as best I can.