Born: Keesler Air Force Base, Biloxi, MS  1953

Raised: Roanoke, VA

Serious Hang Time: Charlottesville, VA, Edisto Beach, SC, St. Augustine, FL

Formal Education: B.A. Biology Randolph-Macon College Ashland, VA 1975

Informal Education: Books, Google, Life

When I was three years old, staying at home with my Mom while Dad was at work, someone took their eyes off of me for a moment. Dad had been house painting on the weekend and had left paint-filled brushes in coffee cans by the side of the house. I grabbed a big brush by the handle, went to Dad's new two-toned 1954 Chevy Bel Air sitting in the driveway and began to paint the sides of the doors as well as the chrome bumpers. When someone found me she nearly had a heart attack. What was worse, Dad was due home any minute and she knew that I was close to death. She reasoned that my survival depended upon getting me cleaned up and in my bed asleep before he arrived. I owe a great deal to Mom for this swift and insightful action. Had she hesitated, many years later I would not realize the first powerful sign indicating my artistic inclinations.

In 1971 Mrs. Harris, my high school art teacher, recognized my potential as an artist and arranged a meeting for my parents and I with an art school representative. I was completely indifferent to art school, likely because I was playing football as a quarterback, having some success, and absorbed with continuing to play the game in college. Art school, although a fine alternative to me, represented an acknowledgment that I was done with the game of football, which, at the time and with the immaturity and lack of perspective of youth, I could not fathom. My parents were there for guidance, but the decision ultimately was left to me. Many decades later I would look back upon this meeting as the untaken fork in the road of my life.

I have an ambivalent evaluation of the path taken: I believe that there are no accidents in life, that every moment is perfect, and that even poor judgment has an ultimate purpose; therefore, I did not take the wrong path, for there IS no wrong path. A winning path can lead to riches, but there are plentiful examples of ultra-wealthy individuals who are miserable and suffer as a result; a losing path can lead to rock bottom, but there are plentiful examples of individuals who find their way to purpose and fulfillment from that foundation. The paths I have chosen were adopted for utility rather than love. I tried to be someone I am not. And now I have traveled many years to come back to this familiar place in the road, recognizing it as an old friend waiting patiently for me to accept my true nature.

I went on to play a couple of years of college football, and puzzlingly, when I realized my physical limitations in that sport and that football would no longer be a huge part of my life, I did not immediately recognize Art as my fallback position.

Instead, I flipped a quarter with some fraternity brothers to determine our majors. I remember for me the choice being between political science and biology. Came up Biology. Tree-hugger's Delight. Luckily, in the Liberal Arts curriculum, as in Life, one can actually make no mistakes when choosing a major. You get a liberal supply of all the arts, including the art of science. I got lucky, got a great education, and then I plunged into life experiences: a trip to Key West where I sang an original song on open-mike night at The Bull & Whistle Bar to apparent drunken, but critical, acclaim; a spiritual quest to Japan disguised as a motorcycle tour across the southern USA on Interstate 10 which ultimately led me, not to Japan but, to Carmel, CA and Self-Realization Fellowship; summer work in a pre-stressed concrete yard in Savannah, GA; working as a galleyhand on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico and as a steward on an Amoco seismographic crewboat searching for oil in the delta bayou; helping with the building of a steel-hulled sailboat in New Iberia, Louisiana; writing over fifty songs, over twenty-five sonnets, and a multitude of poems, and singing and playing guitar with Ken Gill, a close college buddy, on yachts and in mansions and hotels in Miami;  bartending; working various jobs and finding a decent fit in carpentry and residential contracting; finding and marrying a good Southern woman and experiencing the full range of love and hurt in that marriage as it dissolved after sixteen years; playing and singing in a weekend-only rock and roll band for nine years south of Charleston, SC on the barrier island of Edisto; etc.

This is the resume' of The Grasshopper, not The Ant.

Although my artistic nature manifested continuously through the filters of these experiences, I never came to embrace the fact that I was an artist, just as my high school art teacher once foresaw.

In 2008 I began to create works of art, not because of some legacy that will collect dust and return to dust, not to prove something to anyone, nor because I am tormented, but more because I simply enjoy the process of creating something of interest or beauty where once there was nothing. The feedback I get reinforces my conviction that I have been given a wonderful gift. The passion I once felt for sport, I now feel for art.

If you would like to speak with me about specific works, you may leave a message at Tel: 434-953-6209 leaving your name and a specific time you would like to be contacted. I will return your call within 48 hours.