I was born in Boston, five minutes after midnight.  I grew up near the Rhode Island border, in an old factory town...big family, big house...big yard with a Tarzan rope and a black walnut tree that we called the stink bomb tree.

My first studio was in my bedroom.  I had a school-size blackboard in my room and with a set of chalks would illustrate the books I was reading.  My second studio was on the third floor in what we called the model room (I do not know why).

I learned about painting at the hardware store.  Also. one of the neighbors was an art teacher and he helped me with my first serious painting when I was about 7.  It was a 4' x 4' on masonite.

My parents saved ads and magazines and books about Norman Rockwell for me. This was what art was about to them.  Actually, this led me to an early love of Homer and Hopper and all the artists that started out as illustrationists.

So, like most, I started initially with pen and ink and graphite.  I drew mostly portraits and graduated to pastels.  However, the first time I picked up a brush I was abstract and without any real frame of reference.

I fought making my art a career.  So I got a degree in English with minors in Secondary Ed and Theatre  Three months as a teacher and I knew I had chosen the wrong career.  That is when I took my art seriously as my vocation...my calling.  And so I took any job to pay the rent so I could paint.  I studied methods and materials and apprenticed with about four artists.  I also took a number of postgraduate courses at mass college of art...but found that painting was the only real teacher.

And so I paint...a lot.