In my mind, I took up easel painting only recently, and that is the reason my paintings are so incoherent in style, subject, and quality. Truth be told, however, it's been almost a couple of decades now, but the paintings are still "all over the place" and few are very successful or what I would call good. I don't care; I'm stuck on the craft now, if nothing else. It's what I want to do.

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Before, I was concentrating on woodcarving and working in the idiom that is aboriginal to northern Southeast Alaska, what we used to call "Northwest Coast style." You can see that work above, in the woodcarving tab and under ETCETERA, and read a little about that in the bio section. One of the reasons for the switch to sitting at an easel, painting representational things is the peripatetic nature of my life in the last few years; it's just been much easier to make small paintings than to cart around all the tools and space needed for sculpture. Another reason is because I have needed to do a lot of carpentry on houses over the last bunch of years. I've come to realize that that kind of work takes care of my need to make sculptures.

 

I started dabbling with oils after having stumbled upon my old oil paints from college, somehow miraculously stored in my parents' home for eons. Among other things, I enjoyed collecting tubes with interesting pigments, and I built myself a stellar collection on the cheap by buying and selling on eBay. Hence, the banner of swatches on my homepage. Then, I set out to get really good at the medium. This alone has occupied most of my efforts, and it's only with my latest painting, Green Hill Surf, shown above, that I feel like I know what I'm doing as an oil painter.

 

In addition to the motley assortment shown on this page, there are paintings I call "oil sketches" and Northwest Coast "formline" pieces to be seen under ETCETERA, above.

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