On a good day, when eye, mind, heart, light, locale, atmosphere and subject are all in sync, I look through the camera, and for a brief moment, time holds its breath and the simple, austere beauty of the world presents itself, neatly framed in my viewfinder. Some images are discoveries, others are constructions. In either event, with the camera, I find myself becoming more open, more in-the-moment, more reflective toward what I see before me. In sharing my work, I hope the images may, in some way, stir similar experiences within you, the viewer, as you stand and respond to the complex world you see.
In my art practice, my primary goal is to uncover the poetry and mystery of even the most unassuming subject through mindful seeing. Since my personal aesthetic tends toward the reductive, I make monochromatic images with black-and-white film and vintage 35mm cameras and lenses, and interpret them through digital processing similar to my workflow in the traditional darkroom.
As I create my prints, I am as much in mind of the drawings of Georges Seurat and the traditions of mezzotint printmaking as I am in the process of traditional photographic imaging. And, I appreciate how the traditional artifact of film "grain" serves to create a link to monochromatic works of the past. Stylistically and thematically, my work seems to fall somewhere in the middle ground between the early 20th Century Pictorialists and the 1970’s Minimalists, where the sublime and the quotidian co-exist.
I have been an active photographer for over forty years and, in 1993, earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in Photography from San Francisco Art Institute. From that time, until my retirement in 2015, I was involved in post-secondary photographic education as a Professor of Photography.
Over the years, my work has been shown in galleries and museums across the U.S. at venues including:
– Pacific Northwest Drawers, Blue Sky Gallery, Portland, OR
– The Print Center, Philadelphia, PA
– Carmel Center For Photographic Art, Carmel, CA
– Yosemite National Park Gallery, Yosemite, CA
– Helen S. Smith Gallery, Green River College, Auburn, WA
– Jundt Museum of Art, Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA
– The Kent Arts Commission Centennial Gallery, Kent, WA
– Gallery One, Ellensburg, WA
– Sarah Spurgeon Gallery of Art, Department of Art and Design, Central Washington University, Ellensburg, WA.
– Museum of Culture and Environment, Central Washington University, Ellensburg, WA
– The Maryland Federation of Art Gallery, Annapolis, MD
Beginning in April, 2020, my work will be featured in The 2020 Pacific Northwest Photography Viewing Drawers at Blue Sky Gallery, Portland, OR, in a year-long exhibition
Listed in the Photo-Eye Art Photography Index
Honors and awards include:
– Kent Arts Commission Purchase Award in 2015 and 2016
– Gallery One Board of Trustees Award for 2016 Kittitas County Juried Exhibition
– The Museo Fine Print Award for The Print Center 84th Annual International Competition in 2010
– Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Visual Arts for Photography in 2009