I am an Indianapolis native. My mother was the Art Director for the Saturday Evening Post and being a single working parent, I spent lots of evenings and weekends at her work drawing on the walls (special paint and markers, no vandalism!). I attended Decatur TWP schools until we moved to Brownsburg in 1977, I graduated from BHS in 1983 and joined the Navy. I was attached to the U.S.S. Merimack and went on several cruises, Baltops85 was a North Atlantic/Baltic Sea operation, Port-of-calls in Iceland, Greenland, Scotland, Denmark, W. Germany, and England, this was the best of my cruises. After the Navy I worked several entry level jobs and applied to every Art related job that opened, to no avail. Then I met and married my wife in 1991, we have an 18 year old son and an 11 year old daughter. In 1993 we moved to Southern Indiana because I got a job as a Computer Graphics Designer for a small software company, wonderful job until the company closed 9 months later. I have been working in a variety of fields since, most recently a service technician for a sign company. I had a major accident in January of 2010 that completely changed my life. After 5 months horizontal and helpless, I was allowed to begin walking again and I began looking for work. In the middle of July my paintbox began to whisper to me and for a while I resisted the urge to get it out, then my wife’s job was cut. Both of us unemployed with 2 kids, car and house payments, etc.etc. My Paints were screaming at me now and I began to paint. I am painting to live and living to paint.