Concise Biography

I am an artist living and working in Boston, Massachusetts, creating still lifes, landscapes, and portraits in the contemporary realist tradition. My paintings are available for viewing and purchasing through several galleries and online venues, and through monthly shows at Studio 201 in Boston’s SOWA district. They are now held in approximately 100 private collections.

Since August 2006, I have been practicing the Painting-A-Day discipline, in which I create one finished work every weekday. This project is a continuous and exciting challenge.

Artist's Statement

Painting is the third career in my life. The first two, as a musician and then as a developer of internet software, still breathe their influence into my daily studio work. My experiences as a composer left me with very strong sensitivities to rhythm, line, balance, and harmony. These are every bit as much a part of the world of the painting as they are the symphony. Although I no longer compose, I would say that music remains an integral part of my creative process; I cannot paint without my studio being filled with it. In fact, when it is quiet, it feels like a very sterile and vaguely uncomfortable place to be. The nearly dozen years that I spent working as a software engineer have given me a careful, deliberative, and analytical mindset. I find I often apply this thinking while painting, particularly in studying the nature and behavior of light, which, in one limited sense, is what painters really do.

Most of my paintings, and in particular my daily paintings, begin with a moment of connection with a common object or scene: Fundamentally re-viewing something I’ve seen around me dozens, maybe hundreds of times, and realizing that it has within it the seed of a work of art. These quiet, peaceful, and intimate moments are for me the essence of what it means to be an artist. I suppose the process of working out the paintings themselves is really an attempt to hold and savor these moments of mental and spiritual Stillness.

Curriculum Vitae

Born
	Saginaw, Michigan, 1967

Education
	Bachelor of Music in composition The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, 1990
	Ph.D. program in music theory and composition Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, 1990 to 1995
	Studies in figurative and still life painting The New England Realist Art Center, Boston, MA, 2005 to present

Professional Experience
	Software developer and engineer in the internet and publishing industries 1995 to 2006

Solo Exhibits
	Studio 201 450 Harrison Avenue, Boston, MA Every month since September, 2004
	The Hourglass Gallery Melrose, MA 2006

Group Exhibits
	Got Art? Show Holliston, MA 2006
	United South End Artists Open Studios Boston, MA 2006
	Essex Art Center Paint-Out and Auction Lawrence, MA 2006
	The Hourglass Gallery, Ongoing exhibits Melrose, MA 2006
	ArtsFest Beverly (juried exhibition) Beverly, MA 2006
	SOWA Art Walk Beverly, MA 2006
	Melrose Arts Festival (juried exhibition) Melrose, MA 2006
	SOWA Artist's Guild Holiday Show Boston, MA 2005
	United South End Artists Open Studios Boston, MA 2005
	SOWA Art Walk Boston, MA 2005
	Malden Sketch Group: Commerce Place Exhibit (juried exhibition) Malden, MA 2005
	Anton Fine Art Gallery Wakefield, MA 2005
	The Bromfield Gallery, 10 x 10 Show Boston, MA 2004
	United South End Artists Open Studios Boston, MA 2004
	Barn Pottery Studio And Gallery West Medford, MA 2004

Bibliography
	Art Calendar Magazine "The New Internet Sensation: A Painting A Day" October 2006, pp 3-8

Detailed Biography

The line to becoming a painter was not a straight one for me. However, as any artist will tell you, straight lines are not as compelling as curved ones.

My first love was music – I began playing violin at age 8 and started composing immediately. I pursued my undergraduate and graduate studies in composition at the University of Michigan and Brandeis University. Throughout these years I accumulated a steady stream of national and international prizes and performances, including a 1995 performance of my 2nd String Quartet by the Pro Arte Quartet in New York’s Carnegie Hall. With this, however, came an increasing awareness that I was not temperamentally suited to an academic life.

Though lacking any formal training in the field, I wandered (nearly accidentally) through the back door into an eleven-year career as a software engineer, working on database, internet, and eCommerce applications. Though financially satisfying, a career writing software left a void. A growing need to find a creative outlet led me (again, almost accidentally) to buy a small painting set at the relatively late age of 30. I have not looked back since then.

Schooling myself through study and observation, painting quickly grew from a pastime to one of the most important elements of my life. In late 2004, I leased studio space in an important arts building in downtown Boston, and began to display and sell my work. About that time I also began studying with Dennis Cheaney at the New England Realist Art Center. I consider the immersion in the technique and practice of 500 years of the realist tradition to be central to my artistic development.

By May, 2006, I was finally ready to embrace a career as an artist; I resigned my position as a software engineer and now devote myself to painting fulltime. Through sales in galleries, my studio, and online, my paintings are in approximately 100 private collections, with that number growing on a very steady basis.