This is not what I do, it is what I am
I have always been a photographer who wanted to be a painter and I’ve been particularly drawn to the work of Frederick Edwin Church, Thomas Cole, and the Hudson River School.
I’ve worked as a professional photographer for my entire adult life. Starting my career in Seattle, then moving on to Chicago, where I worked for advertising agencies and corporations. Think Mc Donald’s, Coca Cola, Budweiser, Apple, Abbott Laboratories, Firestone, Jim Beam and so many more. I was paid to make products perfect in hundreds of magazine ads and bill boards.
In 2006, my wife passed away and I came to he realization that I wasn’t going to live forever. I sold my studio, bought a motor home, and, with my two cats, hit the road thinking that the new adventure would last, perhaps a year. It’s been nearly 20 years and I’m still in my bus.
I was a tourist for the first three years, then I started looking for something to do and selling my work at art festivals seemed like it would be fun. My background in advertising taught me that it is much better to specialize in one area. I was always drawn to the beauty of lighthouses, so the die was cast. It took two years of travel to create enough artwork to fill the walls in my tent. My first shows were a learning process but one by one, I accrued an inventory. I was an East Coast Nomad, traveling from Maine in the summer to Florida in the winter always hunting for the next lighthouse. The great thing about art festivals is, that my potential collectors would shape my travels by recommending their favorite locations which, by the way, a lot of people have. My one goal was, when I was done with my time, that I had created the very finest photography…period. I am a relentless self-taskmaster and I hope that it shows in my work. Wherever I went, my work stood alone at every art show that I participated in and I assembled a following of lighthouse lovers along the way. In the back of my mind, I would like to be know as the foremost photographer of East Coast Lighthouses, but that is for history to decide.