Artist’s Bio:
I was born and raised in central Kansas, but now share my time living in Kansas and Colorado. Early on I enjoyed sketching and drawing. I enjoyed the architectural perception of buildings throughout my career, and have always had a love for the outdoors both in Kansas and Colorado.

I received my education at Bethel College in N Newton, Kansas. I spent 40 years in the building industry as a general contractor. I provided architectural design and construction for both residential and commercial clients.

In 2010 I retired from the building industry and began to enjoy expressing the creativeness I felt with Kansas and Colorado landscapes.

Artist’s Statement:
One of the biggest changes to the Midwest landscape, yet sometimes less noticeable, are the iconic structures on the farmsteads. I have become fascinated with the barns, elevators, and outbuildings on the homesteads on which they once served such an important purpose. These structures have become expensive to maintain and less functional on the homesteads they serve. I enjoy traveling and finding these interesting homesteads. Part of the fascination in this is finding the unexpected building and figuring out how it must have fit in with the time in which it was built. What interests me most, is not the dilapidated state these buildings are in now, but rather how they must have looked in their newest form.

I develop each painting through photographs and sometimes my imagination, or both. I enjoy the challenge of conveying my interpretation of what I see, and painting it into a new form. I use simple landscapes to present these structures with correct architectural lines, shapes and forms along with color, often enhanced or exaggerated, with light and shadows to push forward to the viewer the main subject in the painting. The ever changing weather conditions are also an important part of the land and these homesteads. The fun for me is to put all these aspects together in somewhat of a realistic form, yet bordering on the unrealistic and sometimes glorified form. I hope to convey a new appreciation for the once vibrant and necessary structures of the Midwest that will soon be gone from our landscapes.