Lifeguard, oil on wooden closet door, 80" x 24", 1997.

My painting practice started thirty years ago with commissioned portraits of friends, family and coworkers, mostly using photographs as sources. I branched out from this to explore how individual portraiture blends into figurative works that try to go beyond individual portraiture to more generally function as symbols, icons, or archetypes.

An early example of this was a portrait of my brother. I asked him to pose as a lifeguard sitting in a lookout tower--he is not a swimmer or a lifeguard. To my family, the painting was a comical portrait of Sam looking too self-serious for someone dressed in swim trunks and a bathing cap. To anyone else, it was often interpreted as an iconically and ironically posed lifeguard who looked slightly ridiculous as he sat like a king on a throne that was not there. I got the idea for the pose in a dream and ran with it.

I have continued to explore works that walk between individual portraiture and more generalized expressions of the human form. I work intuitively, drawing inspiration from the people I see everyday as they live, work and struggle.

My most recent exhibition took up the idea of a portrait of a school community as viewed through an assembly of individualized group portraits. Please see the gallery, "Four at A TIme"

And currently, I am working on a series of individual portraits of five residents in a senior living center in my hometown (International Falls, MN). Through multiple images of each resident seen pantomiming about something they value in life, I am trying to honor each of them with portraits that unfurl some of their identities as holders of lifelong wisdom, wisdom best conveyed by actually talking to them. The exhibition will be held in Spring 2027 at the Good Samaritan Living Center in Int'l Falls.