I was trained in Cincinnati where I grew up drawing. I tried to major in
drawing but there was no program yet at the Art Academy so I settled for printmaking. Still now, I major in drawing and minor in printmaking. Figure drawing is my first priority and because it has been my major focus over the last 20 years, I am able to navigate other realms and media with an expanded capacity to speak in figurative paradigms and metaphors. The discipline of figure drawing has given me the vocabulary to become tangential
in my chosen media, woodcuts.

I became interested in woodcuts after college following a show at the
Mid-America Printmaking conference. I saw large scale woodcuts there that really changed things for me. I was already drawn to the richness and power
of woodcuts and had collected books about the French poster designers and
the German Expressionist woodcutters reviving the predominantly eastern medium. I started with small pieces of linoleum and a set of cheap Speedball tips, moving on to small blocks of wood and impossibly dull carving tools. I kept alot of Band-Aids back then. I collected all sizes and shapes of wood. I was given by chance some old cherry cabinet doors into which I made my first real attempts at woodcutting. That first chance at a cherry door felt like the first time I drew on a litho stone, that beefy richness of surface under the right tools with the right idea was exhilarating and the printing process is much simpler than etching or lithography which appeals to me. The look and feel of wood appeals to me.

Heroes, yes I have them, Kollwitz and Barlach among them. Edvard Munch,
Egon Schiele, Jim Dine and Chaim Soutine along with the German expressionists make up my major influences. My studio was once a garden shed which I have expanded now three times and turned it into a proper studio called the Cabin.
It sits behind my house where I keep my family.