About the Artist

One of my earliest memories is sitting at the kitchen table drawing and coloring. I don't remember a time when I wasn't drawing or writing in my spare time. I spent a lot of my childhood in rural Illinois where I was blessed with national forests, state parks, and national wildlife refuges in the fertile land at the joining of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. I was homeschooled and my exposure to the art world was limited to trips to nearby stores, catalogs selling licensed products featuring popular art that came in the mail, and the great history and literature illustrators that could be found in my textbooks. This birthed in me a love of writing my own stories with wildlife and historical themes and illustrating them as best I could using whatever materials I had for school. At age 12 in 2006, my mom got me a small set of paints and I dove in to the task of teaching myself to paint. That same year, due to extreme financial problems for my family, I began to sell my watercolors and acrylics to help my parents marking the beginning of my art career. My teen years were spent trying my best at school and art, playing a balancing act of work, business, education, and contests. Local businesses partnered with me to sell my work and a park ranger in town encouraged me to paint duck stamps. I was blessed during my teens to design the 2008, 2009, and 2010 Illinois State Duck Stamps as well as win the 2011 Federal Junior Duck Stamp. That same year, my family moved towns and opened a small gallery in our garage that began selling small limited editions of my work. However, it didn't last long. For most of my life, my parents relationship had been slowly separating and finally came to an intense end. Sensing that I would need a new home and new career path very soon at age 18, I began to contact fine art galleries and shortly after began a long and blessed relationship with Masters Editions Galleries network and a publishing relationship with their in house printing company, Infinity Fine Art Publishing. I left my studio gallery and life in Illinois behind, and landed in Tennessee at base of the Smoky Mountains. A few busy years later, I began a wonderful relationship with MHS Licensing. Together we developed a robust art licensing program, working with many of the finest companies not only in America and but also internationally. Knoxville became my home base and life and work continued at a steady hum until 2020. The years of the pandemic were pivotal for us all, and during 2021 I lost my closest friend in the art business, who happened to be the publisher and owner of the galleries previously mentioned. The season of grief and disappointments of that time period drove me to try to find comfort in my work and I've undergone immense personal and artistic change since. During 2021, upon leaving the city and after so many years of teaching myself drawing, watercolor, gouache, pastel, acrylic, and oil, I followed my heart and decided to oil paint full time. To further my growth, I began accumulating and studying an extensive art education book collection and embarked on a lifetime of broadening my understanding of art beyond my commercial work by diving in to learning as much as I can each evening about art history, the human figure, nature, historical and marine art, the fine art world and oil painting. In 2024 I was accepted as a new member in the Society of Illustrators in New York City. In early 2026 I became a Signature Member in the Society Of Animal Artists, something I deeply cherish. I paint and draw almost all day every day, at my home studio in a little room tucked upstairs or in the windowed garage where I live on a small farm in rural Eastern Tennessee. I work and gather reference and inspiration from the field and from life as much as possible, but often let my minds eye, imagination, and inner intuition take the wheel in my sketchbooks and many of my studio works. I am so deeply grateful for the abundant blessings that my Creator, art, life, loved ones and collectors have given me and I challenge myself daily to not take it for granted and to devote myself to the pursuit of excellence in art and life. I've heard that a picture is worth a thousand words. Hopefully my paintings can communicate with you far better than I could consciously, whether with a thousand words or perhaps better yet, no words at all. When I put feeling in to a piece, that's the best way I know how to connect and share with others. I gravitate towards doing work that makes me feel good, puts me in awe, wanting to disappear into a scene, sense a mood, or get lost in a storyline because that is what helps me in day to day life. My hope is for that energy in the work to be palpable when viewed and maybe help others in their lives just like it does for me. I believe that art, done with a sincere and earnest heart head and hand, finds a way of bringing a ray of light in to a dark moment. I've spent my life dedicated to that belief.