Left My Heart in the Midwest (Currently in Progress)

Medium - Pastel on Gator Board
Dimension - 15 X 19

The Ahwahnee Meadow

Medium - Pastel on Gator Board
Dimensions - 12 X 16

Vanitas I (unfinished)

Mic Check

Meadow in the Sky

Mic check

Back Home

Storm Clouds Gather

Study for series of vanitas

Medium - Pastel
Dimension - 14X18
Price - SOLD

Sketchbook Study of Cathedral Range

The four main peaks are as follows from left to right... Unicorn, Cockscomb, the Echos and Cathedral.

Medium - Pastel on toned paper
Dimension - 8X11
Price - 75$

West End of Yosemite Valley from Devils Bathtubs

Medium - Pastel on Paper
Dimensions-
Price - SOLD

My Country Tis of Thee, Sweet Land of Cable TV...

Sure, I know it's a bit dramatic. This one, The Passion of the McChrist, and the other one of the TV/crucifix called Oh, the Gruesome Destiny... were all a short series I did to illustrate being discontent with the typical American lifestyle. Sometimes you gotta get in people's faces to get your point across. Then in a bit of irony they got a lot of good public feedback in Marquette, MI (a place ripe with ultra right wingers). They were hung in the Marquette Public Library, Northern Michigan Student Art Gallery, and in the Dead River coffee house for a solo show. Oh, and the other companion piece called The 9 to 5 Blues won an award for a local radio show art contest. All in all it was a pretty impressive response for 4 pastels meant to piss a lot of people off. Jokes on me I guess.

Medium - Pastel on Paper
Dimensions - 30"X25"
Price - 500$

The Passion of the McChrist

When I was 9 Mel Gibson was solving all the worlds problems on a little box in my living room, McDonald's was a meeting place for my cub scout meetings, and Ronald McDonald healed large groups of small, sick children. We stuffed our faces with junk food while unwittingly being indoctrinated with neo-conservative christian rhetoric. Between commercials and cub scout meetings Ronald had as much airtime in my developing brain as Jesus did while at church on Sundays. During some pretty important developmental years of my youth I had put Mel Gibson, Ronald McDonald, and Jesus Christ all in the same catagory. What the hell did I know? Jesus walked on water but Ronald could make millions of delicious chicken nuggets the same shape everytime. Not to mention heal the worlds children with leftover pocket change from the dollar menu. Now only if Jesus delivered junk food at the gates of heaven...... Thanks to Mel Gibson for part of the stupid title.

Medium - Pastel on Paper
Dimension- 20"X25"
Price - 600$

As the Dogs of the Hours Close In

Arcata, CA

Sketch of an old abandon house in Humbolt

Darby's Kids

Sketchbook Study of Upper Yosemite Falls

I'm a sucker for drawing waterfalls. I've been doing studies from this little spot on a sandy part of the Merced river. Sooner or later I'll have a big finished pastel to show for it.

Medium - Pastel on Toned Paper
Dimension - 8X11
Price - 75$

Tuolumne River Cascades

On the Tuolumne river, way up in the eastern Sierra Nevada's, there's a mind blowing swimming hole that I've spent countless hours at. This is a pastel drawing of that spot with Unicorn and Cathedral peak in the backround.

Medium - Pastel on Paper
Dimensions - 15"X22"
Price - 500$ (350$ for anyone who lives in Yosemite National Park at least 4 months year)

Boystown Studio

Deep in the heart of Yosemite Valley there's a place called Boystown. I've lived there for about 2 years of my life. I'm leaving in one week and I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about this place. It's like living in a bar with sleeping quarters similar to the ones in Alien 3. You know that ship with all the loud noises and shady characters wandering around looking three sheets to the wind? Only we aren't 2 light years from earth (so-to-speak). Just light years from reality.

Wherever I live, I like to save space for spontaneous drawing. I’ll designate walls, pillars, cupboards or wooden planks. There is no specific idea in mind at first. I like to take the energy of whatever is happening at that particular moment and turn it into something that somewhat resembles a feeling I am having. A lot of the times it is boredom and pent up aggression that decides what my house looks like. This was cabin fever at its worst. A small cabin at 4000 feet elevation, 4 feet of snow, 1 hour of daylight, 6 or 7 pints of beer, and this is what came out. It’s also the product of an unquenchable Bukowski habit.

Broken II

This drawing is a new version of an old poem I illustrated

Medium - Pastel and Graphite on Paper
Dimensions - 9X11
Price - SOLD

The 9 to 5 Blues

Throughout college and the few years following I worked a variety of low end service industry jobs. This drawing expresses the frustration inherent with working a hard job for chump change, having terribly vindictive bosses, and accepting a complimentary chicken strip dinner on the window sill of the dish pit five or six nights a week. Millions of people make a living like this for their entire lives without complaint. Hats off to them for being stronger people than me. This is my formal complaint letter.

Medium - Pastel on Matboard
Dimensions - 25X30
Price - 500$

Oh, the gruesome destiny...

I'm not actually sure what the motivation for this drawing was. I did it in 2003 and displayed it in a few galleries around Marquette, MI alongside the other three in the "Americana" series. My professor at the time nicknamed drawings like these "psychoscapes". The title was GODDAMNIT for a while and caused some hilarious reactions that I was able to witness as I was the monitor in one of those galleries. I watched a woman walk up to it and mumble "it's just so depressing" with a nauseaus look on her face... priceless.

Medium - Pastel on Matboard
Dimension - 18X24
Price - 350$

Forgotten oil still life

First attempt at a still life in oil. It was painted with the help of Alexander Rokoff at Rokoff studios in North Portland.

Sound of Joy

This is a drawing of a path in Marshall, Michigan that has all sorts of history to anyone who grew up in the area. The image will be used on the cover of an album by a band named A Love Dog from Chicago, Illinois. Check them out on myspace.com.

Medium - Pastel on Sanded Wallis Paper
Dimensions - 18X24
Price - 600 $ without frame

The Marmot Palace

At May Lake (a high sierra camp in Yosemite National Park) there's a tree where the marmots have made a virtual palace of tunnels underneath the roots and granite. Locals (all 8 people that live at the camp) call it the marmot palace. This pastel was done mostly on site with a little work back in the studio.

Medium - Pastel on Paper
Dimensions- 16X20
Price - SOLD

Sleeping Women

Here is a quick drawing of a women sleeping in a hostel in David, Panama.

Medium - Graphite, Conte, and Tone Paper
Dimensions - 8X11
Price - NFS

A Need For Glue by Charles Bukowski

This is an illustration of a poem by Charles Bukowski. I'd done the still life of the deer skull while going to school at Northern Michigan University in the deep, dark upper peninsula of Northern Michigan. A while later I came across the poem A need For Glue and added the text because of the relation of the broken bone at the ending. I've since lost it to some random closet at NMU.

Medium - Pastel and Pen on Board
Dimensions - 20X28
Price - NFS

Two Apples and an Orange

Two Apples and an Orange is one of my first still lifes in color. A few of the places it was exhibited at are the Marquette Community Art Center and more notably the Kalamazoo Institute of Art. It was sold out of the KIA gallery where it had been juried into the Western Michigan Regional Art Competition in 2005. (The signature in the lower right was replaced with my regular signature prior to exhibition and the sale of the work)

Medium - Pastel on Board
Dimensions - 18X24
Price - SOLD

A Practical Sense of Immortality

The title for this one came from the writings of John Muir and the image is based on an experience I had on one of my first hikes in the High Sierras. In an effort to "out man" each other we ended up hiking 54 miles in 2 and a half days. I carried a heavy bottle of whiskey with me that never even got opened because of how sick we all felt anytime we got a chance to stop and drink it. This one was part of my senior exhibition back in 2005 at the Devos Art Museum.

Medium - Pastel on Paper
Dimensions - 24X18
Price - SOLD

The Studio

Usually, I live in a small apartment or cabin which means I sleep and lounge in my studio. This is a photo of where I lived in the Clinton neighborhood of southeast Portland.

A conversation at the Milwuakee Institute of Art

I completed this illustration of my professor Tom Cappuccio having a discussion under the giant vaulted ceilings of the Milwaukee Institute of Art in 2003.

Medium - Graphite and Conte on Board
Dimensions - 16X21
Price - 250.00

Colin Lives

"Colin Lives" is a drawing dedicated to my friend Colin who survived a 120 foot fall and two months in a coma. He is the guy with his back turned towards you. The image is based on a photo I took on one of our first of many adventures together. We were urban backpacking through the Bay area where we saw Tortoise play at the Filmore, slept in a backyard in Oakland, ate day old burritos, and layed on the beach with nothing to do or think about. We were basically enjoying how it felt to be young, poor, and full of ideals.

Medium - Pastel on Paper
Demensions - 18X20
Price - NFS

El Tuskee and Unicorn Peaks Study

El Tuskee and Unicorn Peak are my two favorite peaks in Yosemite National Park. This is a sketchbook, plein aire drawing I did sometime in the summer of 2005. It's a prep sketch for a number of studio paintings I am planning for the Tuolumne Meadows area.

Medium - Pastel on Toned Paper
Dimensions - 8X11
Price - 75$

Untitled

This is a finished version of a value study I did in preparation for an acrylic painting. I think it's interesting because of a certain tension you get from seeing the figure almost exiting the frame. The large clouds suggest a storm is coming in from sea and the boy looking away leaves you to wonder about his state of mind. I've yet to come up with a title that encompasses the tension I feel when I look at this image. The finished painting was a christmas gift to my grandmother and still hangs on her wall back in Michigan.

Medium - Graphite on illustration board
Dimensions - 12X18
Price - 200$

Still Death

The importance in Still Death lies in technique and use of color as opposed to any social content. I am employing some new color theory and explorations into my technique that I picked up in a workshop by Alexander Rokoff in Northeast Portland.

Medium - Pastel on Paper
Demensions - 16 X22
Price - 275.00

Lowtide at Haystack Rock

I based this drawing off sketches and about a half dozen digital images I took on an early spring trip to the coast.

Medium - Pastel on Paper
Demensions - 12X24
Price - 500.00

The Panamanian Man

The Panamanian Man was based from a quick photo my friend Charlee Wagner took of a serene man leaning out of pool room window in Bouqete Panama in the Chiriqui Highlands. It was at one of those moments that defines the reason for traveling to a foreign country with all of your possesions strapped to your back. We had been feverishly (sometimes literally with fevers) hopping around Costa Rica and Panama and were currently waiting for another Chicken Bus (slang for old american school bus) to take us back to the lowlands. We were sitting in a gazebo in the middle of town when it started pouring down that tropical sheet of rain cooling off the entire mountain side. Then a few local teenagers joined us in the gazebo to stay dry and started playing Hotel California on their guitar. There is nothing like a few weeks of listening to Central American dance music to turn you into an Eagles fan. So Charlee and I sung along as best we could as the bus pulled up and started loading luggage. When we were boarding we looked back to thank the panamanian teenagers and noticed this man with a perfect smile leaning out of the bar enjoying the spring rain. Charlee asked to take his picture and he gave her this smile that can only come from a man who has never owned a camera in his life. I hope Charlees picture and my drawing conveyed a glimpse of the tranquility that is felt by these people in their sleepy, tropical village.

Medium - Pastel on Paper
Demensions - 16X23
Price - SOLD

Storm Clearing Over Mount Clark

This is a depiction of the "alpine glow" from the ridge at May Lake where I spent last summer. By definition, the Alpine Glow is a rosey light that gets cast over the mountains as a result of light waves being bent and scattered as they travel long distances through earths dirty, particulate-filled atmosphere. I was working as a camp helper and had plenty of opportunities to sketch Mount Clark from this particular perspective in preperation for an illustration I would later complete in my studio. Every evening while we were finishing up dinner the entire crew and most of the guests would rush up to the top of the ridge to watch for that special 10 to 15 minutes where the entire atmosphere turns to neon colors. Five plein aire drawings and 40 digital images later I had what I would need to create this drawing.

Medium - Pastel on Paper
Demensions - 19X25
Price - 500.00

Portland Cityscape

This is the first of many portland cityscapes to come. It is the view from the Burnside bridge facing southwest in February as the sun is setting. There are so many atmospheric effects behind the west hills at sunset that the possiblities are endless. I have been studying the Hudson River School painters of the late 1800's, John Constable, and JMW Turner for insight into capturing these effects.

Medium - Pastel on Paper
Dimensions - 10X18
Price - 400.00