My Story

My fascination with birds began as a child. My father would often refer to a bird book to identify a species he was unfamiliar with, I suspect on some level I internalized that to mean, birds had value. That value has since become immeasurable for me.

I have no formal art training. I can say the only A's I ever received in high school was art class. I did not apply any of my creative energy until my late twenties, prior to that I was obsessed with jazz and the Blue Note recordings of the 50s and 60s. My love of jazz and birds has never abandoned me.

With a wife and two young sons, I quit my job, and from that point forward, would rely on my creativity to support my family. Somehow, we survived. I simply loved what I did so much, that I think my gratitude for the process outweighed the fear of making the next house payment. My wife and I worked tirelessly, without her, I could never have stepped into the success that lied ahead.

My niche was anatomical and color accuracy. I had access to study skins at the Kalamazoo Nature Center and I used them for measurements and color plates.

I studied photographs incessantly (a practice I have yet to relinquish). We sold exclusively wholesale to catalogs, nature galleries, jewelry stores and high-end gift shops. By the mid-90s we had gained an exceptional reputation and business was thriving. That allowed us to purchase a new home with acreage and a studio on the property and employed several people. 

In 2008 my creativity shifted, and I began to make these very minimalist bird carvings, they also possessed a humoristic appeal. Those led to humorous illustrations and Birdville Art was born.

Next came the reclaimed wood years, where I schlepped those pieces from art fair to art fair. Throughout those years, it was always the abstract expressionist movement that I was most pulled to. It just resonated with me on a level for which I have no language.

I enjoyed painting abstracts and eventually developed paint excavating techniques that led to some remarkably interesting color structures. Every night I would absorb the work of Mark Rothco, Barnet Newman and Clyfford Still and the next day approach my canvas yearning to capture a fragment of their genius.

Then came the pandemic. I could feel a new body of work emerging. I am by nature incredibly impatient. The new work would emerge in its time not mine. The torment was unbearable. I would paint still life’s just to ease the anxiety. and when it was time, it revealed itself to me, and lo and behold it was my lifelong love that lay waiting. This new work was about form and its relationship to abstraction and the form was birds. And this is what now gets me out of bed every morning. I have never experienced the emotional investment this body of work brings with it; I am learning to manage it and have accepted it as part of the process.