What I want in my photography is not the sweet stuff but secondhand beauty – rusty truck beds or wilted swaths of North Dakota sunflowers. What I look for in my illustrations is a simple graphic idea – something that transforms the mundane into a metaphor.

I use a stencil and airbrush or spray paint, alcohol markers and charcoal pencils. Sometimes I spray my stencils directly on the digital print and sometimes I illustrate my art first and layer them later in my composition digitally. Either way, my work is a montage of all original illustrations, graphic design and all original photography and the result is easier felt than explained.

I apply the final montage onto an archival art board, coat it with acrylic gel medium and mount it into a handmade floating frame with an airbrushed background. The result is a vibrant, layered work, soaked in color and graffitied with graphic images of iconic Americana and beyond.

My photography comes from my travels across the north woods and American plains, the south, southwest and Latin America and my illustrations come from a long creative journey which began in my youth.

I graduated from Minneapolis Technical Institute with a degree in Commercial Art, Illustration and Photography. I have a 35-year history in graphic design and image building in the best of Minneapolis’ graphic design shops and advertising agencies. The bedrock of my career began in old-school, pre-digital printing. My first job was stacking boxes and sweeping the floor in a print shop where a man still ran a letterpress printer in the back.

I spent several years backpacking through Mexico, Central and South America and the Middle East, northern Africa and Vietnam, Malaysia and Thailand. I worked as an EMT on an ambulance team for the Honduran Red Cross and guided whitewater river trips in the Honduran mountains. I brought back photos and a deep inspiration for color, texture and culture.

Sincerely,