I grew up in Michigan and earned my Bachelor of
Fine Arts in transportation design at the
College for Creative
Studies
(Detroit) in 1988. My grandfather and uncle were
also industrial designers and painters, and my
mother did medical and legal illustration as well
as fine art, so I was constantly exposed to design
and art growing up. Thanks to their influence and
encouragement, I knew from a very young age I would
make a career in the arts.
After college, I worked for about five years in the
automotive industry before I was laid off because
of budget cuts. For several reasons, I decided to
leave Michigan and move to Chicago, where I started
a new career as a point of sale display designer. I
started my own company, Coyote Concepts, in 1995.
After a year in Chicago I moved to my dream city,
San Diego, where I still run
Coyote Concepts
out of a home office, servicing clients all over
the United States.
Although I started out doing everything by hand
with wet and dry media, software eventually
replaced all my markers, chalk, and paint. I enjoy
using the computer, but it definitely lacks the
visceral satisfaction of working directly with
traditional methods. It was this lack of
satisfaction that led me to start painting on
canvas with oils.
Because I am comfortable with digital media, I
start every painting with a
digital photograph
taken by myself or my wife Janet (a talented
photographer in her own right) and explore
variations in color, composition, and contrast in
the computer before printing it to use as a
reference for my paintings. This saves me a lot of
time which a more traditional painter would use
making studies and sketches on paper and
canvas.