BIO

I started oil painting in 1988 when I was 18 and moved to Olympia, WA. A friend took pity on my aimless poverty of that era and gave me several hardened, mangled oil paint tubes and a couple of brushes. Cardboard was my first canvas, and Sonic Youth’s *Daydream Nation*, over and over (and over), was my soundtrack. I loved both; they somehow went together, and after a time, before I found the people, they were all I had. It was a perfect start.

It would almost be dishonest if I didn’t mention that I grew up in a house consumed by creativity and Art with a capital A. My house was laden with texture and wood and paintings and pottery and sculptures and everything made from scratch. My parents were both insanely creative. Much of this creativity came out of necessity and was the sort of “make do” ingenuity that comes from poverty and lack. Both of my parents had grown up in a state of lack across many spectrums, both physical and emotional. It wasn’t until decades later that I’d been able to grasp the desolation of their childhoods. Thankfully we lived in a rural town and I was pretty unaware of what most people outside had.  I’d come inside from being out all day, and if Mom was home from work, she was in the kitchen making bread or noodles hung drying on strings across the kitchen. To me, it felt cozy and romantic; for Mom, it was enjoyable but very necessary. My dad was the capital A Artist. He had a studio and a pottery behind our house. Before gas prices soared and people stayed home, he made a little money selling pots to people traveling through our town to the mountains up the road. “Stillwater Pottery.” Hours of my childhood were spent on a 5-gallon bucket watching him work. I sometimes joined in on the potter’s wheel or would hand build something out of clay. I liked pleasing Dad, but I really didn’t like the texture of the canvas and drying clay or getting muddy and then drying. I was a little neurotic from the start, but you’re not allowed to have druthers in Montana and especially in my family, so I kept it to myself. (A fun fact about neurosis is that when you hide them, they evolve and grow until they’re unable to be hidden and turn into volcanic anxious panic attacks, etc.) I enjoyed drawing and building and working on projects with my parents. I look back and see how perfect those days were.  They created a secret place inside myself that I was soon going to need in order to survive a long darkness.

Poverty showed me that Art is everything a person does. Creativity is who we all are. Creativity is instinctive. It is in every single person. So much so that we can observe that our own thoughts create form in our lives on both a physical and spiritual level. We decide, or maybe learn, whether to imbue our everyday experiences with richness or dull, mundane blankness. It is our birthright to create and have a connection to whatever gives us bits of satisfaction and inspiration.

Capital A Art is another story.  Art in my not-so-humble opinion, doesn’t automatically earn its right onto Mount Creativity. Capital A Art is not the pathway, and most certainly not the entrance, to the richness and the connection of humanity and creation. There are, of course, exceptions, always. Generalizing is just so much more useful and gives those of us who like to disagree and argue– points to be made. But I guess this is a biography, not a tirade, although maybe it’s turned into one.

I grew up watching the most important people in my life make, and make use, of almost everything.  I experienced that there is great satisfaction in doing the same. And when it wasn’t fun that even the discomfort of it was worth it.  Especially when it came to food. We grew it and put it up for the winter. It was very rewarding, especially compared to what my friends’ families were eating. After being taken to a Burger King by friends, I wanted to be a cook and have a restaurant. The workers were wearing crowns, and being a sheltered, literally-minded kid, I was blown away that royalty would make food for people like me. Being served by royalty went along great with my other interest, which was being like Jesus.  Jesus who washed the feet of whores and beggars. I didn’t know what a whore or a beggar was, but it was very bad because the townspeople were in the process of stoning them to death when Jesus happened by and stopped it. People with power being of service to lowly peasants like myself was quite appealing, as I was deep in the process of understanding just how depraved adults can be. I was learning important things, and feeding people was one of them. I did end up being a cook in restaurants, and I do own my own restaurant. Since Covid, owning a restaurant has been more of a beggar/whore getting stoned to death type of situation than being Jesus coming along and saving the day. I hadn’t imagined it the other way around. But perhaps this side is the most useful. It has done wonders for my aforementioned creativity and also making Capital A Art; paintings and sculptures. Desperation and necessity do make the creative juices flow.

When I paint, I think of what I’m thinking about. That sounds contrived and dumb– but it’s true. I always have “thought projects” going on. They can go on for hours or months or years, or decades. The ones that make it into years, or longer, make it into paintings. I am certain an observer of what I make will never see it for themselves.  That’s not what Art or creating is for anyway. I am trying to work something out for myself. I am trying to physically represent thoughts about something on a small scale just so I can see it and understand it by bringing it into 2d or 3d. It feels pleasurable to bring thoughts into a form. Or it feels like shit because it is failing to accomplish what I had wanted. Usually, for me, it is the shit. I am not precious about what I make, but I do get extremely frustrated when things are failing. I spend a great deal of time in frustration. And then sometimes I get the reward of hours flying by and it feels like 20 minutes. Or I do get hours flying by and a pile of shit failure when I step away and look back. For some reason, it all feels worthwhile.