Being born in the early 1950's was the perfect opportunity to come of age with the creative evolution of the 60's. I was old enough to feel the gravity of its freedom and too young be swept away in it. At 12 years old I had it all -- a tree house, a bicycle and a baseball glove.

I remember how excited I was that Saturday in autumn, could have been 1963, when my mother and I scoured the junk shops in East Fort Worth. I was looking for the perfect bike, a fix’er upper –- a sturdy frame with 20” balloon tires. I had about thirty bucks of birthday money to spend. At that time, a store-bought Schwinn Stingray was around $50. I was taken by its unique profile and inspired by its potential for acrobatics. Another twenty dollars wouldn’t have been that hard to save but getting a new bike didn’t seem so important. I guess I needed my imprint on it. . .an old frame repainted, some new ape hanger handle-bars and a banana seat. I was my own man and building it myself had a wisdom I couldn’t explain. Saturdays and Summers were magic back then, there was one goal: cruise the neighborhood, hang out at the Empire Club (my tree house) and play some ball.

Additional to bike building and tree house construction, another hobby was drawing art designs on my clothes. I remember drawing Exxon Tigers and versions of Big Daddy Roth's Rat Fink, and hot rod designs on my sweatshirts. When I was in Jr. High School my mother decided that my room needed painting and asked if I wanted to keep it the same (off white) or change the color?? In a hyper-second I realized the opportunity at hand. "Well Mom, if we're going to paint the room anyway, is it OK if I draw on the walls with Marks-A-Lot?" Believing the water was only knee deep, she gave it the green light. . .

I spent a good portion of the next few years covering the walls, doors and ceiling with an outlandish collage of line drawings, posters, print graphics, fabric, art projects, black lights and more. It became "La Grande" mural. Friends would drop by just to see how the room was coming along. Sometimes they would even bring their parents to show them it was for real -- "see, his parents really let him do that!". Hundreds of hours of Beatles and Rolling Stones fueled my Michael Angelo mood. It's impossible that my parents couldn't recite every lyric to Strawberry Fields, I Am the Walrus and Sgt. Pepper. I eventually had black curtains and black cornice boards with gold fringe. I had black and gold carpet squares and a knock-off oriental rug (influenced by the Munsters and the Adamm's Family?). I thought Andy Warhol's Campbell's Tomato Soup art piece was so cool I painted my own version. It wasn't good, but it was mine! By 1968, my room was my Kingdom, "a stately pleasure dome" no doubt. No way anyone was going to paint over those walls. I made a chandelier out of some old lamp parts and cheap plastic beads, but it took so many beads it wasn't cheap by the time I ran out of money. I have pictures of it; it's atrocious. After I left home, it was inevitable the room would eventually get painted. But it took layers and layers of acrylic paint to hold back that oil based Marks-A-Lot. Those images kept bleeding through, it was kind of haunting, but my parents never regretted letting me run. What a hoot.

After High School, I majored in Fine Art for 2 years and then found myself working in production for Texas Signs, a local custom sign company. I spent a couple of years band sawing plexi-glass and wooden letters and building custom molds to vacu-form plex sign faces. That was back in the old days before sign faces were made with vinyl by computers. I accepted an opportunity to work in Sales that put me more in touch with the design aspects of exterior building graphics. A few years later, I slid into sales in Billboard Advertising in San Antonio. Photography had become a hobby and I was intrigued by the large scale graphics on billboards, especially photo-illustrations. And man, those images were BIG. In the early 80's I took my first trip to the City of Angels with one mission -- to see the movie billboards in Hollywood. I spent most of a day driving and walking Sunset Strip, photographing the billboard art. The movie studios had vast piles of money for marketing so their Outdoor displays usually spared no expense. Their boards had incredible hand painted images, 15-20' tall, 50-60' wide, painted by humans with brushes. Those painters were talented artists who had a right to be proud of their work. Today, it's all done with computers for about 2 bucks a foot.

In the mid 1980's I began working professionally as a photographer in San Antonio. I was employed in and around Photography, Advertising and Media sales for the next 20 years. For several years I had a studio in Dallas with an ad agency that did a lot of in-house print production. With photography, I've worked with a varied clientele including: Coca Cola - San Antonio; Dillards Department Stores; San Antonio Festival; Coca Cola USA - Dallas; Sureguard Industrial Coatings, Bright Ideas Furniture, Barry's Camera and Video; and others.

Like everything I craft, my photography is self-taught. I read books, took a class, went to a seminar, burned up a lot of film and studied my work. It's mid 2006 and I've never owned an auto focus camera with those silly icons and modern day bells & whistles. I will spit the day I'm forced to buy one. Would Ansel Adams want one of those?. . .naw.

In the mid '90's wood crafting became a pass time. Along with that, some curious, mixed media images began appearing in my mind and eventually in my home. Distressed wood furniture combined with graphics?. . .graphic wall display's stained and painted to look old instead of new, challenged by life and buffed like an old door handle. . .Humm?? My works are manifestations of my experiences with life, wood, paint, stain, texture, graphics, composition, craftsmanship and. . .imagination. It looks like Art. It feels like. . .Lightnin' Hopkins, Muddy Waters, Elmo James. . . . .

- ArtBlues