Throughout my life I have been blessed with interests and abilities on both sides of my brain.
Right side abilities were fostered in grade school and high school, leading to undergraduate and graduate degrees in art (painting & drawing) in the late 1970s and early 80s. Now in retirement, I am basically picking up with my artwork where I left off, resulting in a new Paintings gallery which will soon be added here on the site.
As many like myself have learned, a degree in art doesn’t guarantee overnight success. So when the opportunity came along in the mid-80s to take post-graduate classes in electronic media and desktop publishing, new fields ignited by the advent of personal computers, I dove in head first, switching gears to utilize the left side of my brain. The skills gained through these studies enabled me to “pay the bills” through teaching stints and jobs in the corporate world over the next thirty years.
An interest in photography was also planted early on through the one class I took in college, developing black & white film taken with an Olympus OM-1 camera. In the 2000s I dabbled with a few point-and-shoot digital cameras and an entry-level Canon DSLR, mainly for family and vacation photos. In recent years, smartphones had been the main weapons of choice, used to snap source images for many of the Mashup works. The purchase of a Nikon Z 6II mirrorless camera last year rekindled a passion for serious photography, resulting in the work shown in the Photo Galleries.
Most days now find me happily splitting time between painting, photography, and several other hobbies including golf, swimming, chess, and building a new comic book collection after my brother and I sold our treasure-trove of 1960s silver-age books. I have been greatly blessed by my wonderful wife of nearly forty years and two equally wonderful children, now adults out making their own creative mark on the world.