Prairie Houses Painting

When I should have been milking cows on the farm, I was behind the barn, drawing. Art was in me from the start. As a kid, school never quite made sense — until college, where everything clicked. I enrolled in the Professional Art program at Spokane Falls Community College (SFCC), and for the first time, I was immersed in what I loved: design, painting, art history, lapidary — 8 to 12 hours a day. I was home. It was the early 1970s. Vietnam vets were coming home and landing in the same classrooms. I was awestruck by their presence — worn, scarred, honest. They’d lived through things I couldn’t fathom, and their art told those stories. I was just a small-town kid, listening, learning. When I heard Karel Appel say, “I paint like a barbarian in this barbarous time,” something clicked. These vets were doing just that — telling truth through their art. That era cracked the world wide open for me. I discovered Picasso — and suddenly, anything felt possible. Warhol, Johns, Rauschenberg — artists who thought in ways I didn’t know existed. I was hungry. I couldn’t afford a book on Alberto Giacometti, so I copied it by hand — page by page — because I had to have it. I still remember learning to paint with Cadmium Red Light and Hooker’s Green. It sang. SFCC in the early ’70s was alive — with linseed oil in the air, sketchbooks open, rock and roll in the background. That time changed me. Since then, I’ve devoted a lifetime to studying, teaching, crafting, and exploring art. I hold an MFA in Painting from Washington State University, a BFA in Drawing from Fort Wright College, and a Professional Art Degree in Advertising Design from SFCC. I began my career as a graphic designer — working with markers, x-actos, paste-up boards, photo chemicals, and wax. The handmade came first. It still does. I became a professor, eventually earning the honor of founding Director of the School of Design at South Dakota State University. Today, I split my time between Brookings, South Dakota in the summer and Arizona in the winter — always working, always creating.