About the Artists

   From a very early age I spent hours on the floor coloring and drawing.  My parents thought there might be something wrong with me.  I had no interest in toy trucks and cars.  Instead, I spent my time building forts and making gardens and going fishing.  While in junior high, I took a correspondence course in taxidermy.  From there I went to mounting birds, deer and wild hogs.  I soon found that painting is what I wanted to do.  My mother had me painting with Bob Garden, a seascape artist. I was introduced to artist Dick Turner at the age of 15, who taught me form by light and how to apply oil paint.  This made a total connection for me. I painted from memory for about two years to force my mind to create lifelike subjects. A lot of time was spent going to the library to study techniques and the old masters.  

   I later went into watercolor and used egg-tempera for oil under paintings.  It wasn’t until then, a fellow teenage artist friend, John Cobb showed me the work of Andrew Wyeth.  Then I saw in his books that he did the entire painting in egg-tempera.  Once I saw the possibilities, I started raising my own chickens and collected rainwater to use in my ground up paint that I made each day. In time I would find myself outside painting on location doing what is called plein air. 

  I paint a variety of subjects so I don’t get bored doing the same thing. I went on and graduated from King High School in Corpus Christi to receive the Art Award for most outstanding art student.  I had big plans in my mind I to go to art school at the prestigious Chicago Art Institute.  Never made it , I sometimes regret this.  I found myself working, selling art supplies and building picture frames, all of which were of great value.  In time, I would release several prints of coastal art which was marketed along the Gulf coast and East coast along with a few parts of California and the Great Lakes. 

   My work did well and ended up in over 200 galleries and frame shops.  I have painted several large murals in Corpus Christi.  The city council liked my art and sent me to Toledo Spain for a one man show that went on for three weeks.  Under the Reagan administration, Ambassador Robert Strauss took a collection of my paintings to be hung in the United States Embassy in Moscow, Russia for one year. Today my paintings are touring major museums, with some of America’s finest artists and sculptors affiliated with the American Society of Marine Artists.