the subject is in you, nature gives the suggestion

About

I am a maker of pictures—from single photographs to composites of multiple images, a picture of pictures. Photography gives me a way to explore the natural world and pay attention to the moment.

Born and raised in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, I earned a bachelor’s degree in Art and English at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire. My studies brought together studio art, printmaking, design, and literature. I explored Bob Dylan’s poetry, experimented with conceptual art, and made black-and-white photographs of nature, people, buildings, and everyday objects.

Picture making continued alongside a working life on the railroad, first as a brakeman and later as a locomotive engineer, while I also operated a 350-acre sheep farm in western Wisconsin. After moving to Minnesota, I continued farming along and built a career in real estate.

Through those years, photography remained a constant interest, alongside Argentine tango, meditation, philosophy, and time outdoors. During the pandemic, I turned increasingly toward the quietness of nature and a deeper exploration of the present through photography.

My work has been exhibited at One Division Art Gallery in Buffalo, the Hopkins Center for the Arts, and the Edge Center Gallery in Bigfork, Minnesota. These exhibitions include a solo show of more than 80 framed works and an honorable mention in a juried exhibition at Hopkins. In 2023, I published a book of my photographs, Earth, Wind, Sun, Water.

Today, I continue to explore the possibilities of single images, scrolls, and composites—different ways of bringing photographs together and discovering what they can become.

Our lives are made up of three things:

  • Sense perceptions – sight, sound, smell, touch, taste

  • Thoughts

  • Emotions

Photography is a concentrated form of seeing. The Picture Maker images and I, the artist, through the sense perception of sight will evoke thoughts that we may share about it, the image bringing emotions to it. 

Photography recalibrates our senses and expands our awareness. The picture lives only through the one who is looking at it.

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the work

My current work is made up of four types

  • Composite Images

  • Solo Images

  • Scrolls

  • Shadow Boxes

A quotation by American painter, printmaker, and photographer Arther Wesley Dow captures my work well:

“The subject is in you, Nature gives the suggestion.”

I use a variety of formats to explore these subjects.

Currently, the visual presentations are:

  • Solo photo images in two sizes (7” x 10.5” and 12” x 18”). An interesting discovery is that the larger image does not always present itself better; smaller can be more intimate. 

  • Shadow-box duets comprised of an image that is reversed and connected, with no interior mat, creating a single image. Nature images often work well in this format.

  • Larger composites ranging from 4’ x 4’ to 6’ x 3’. These works can contain five or up to twenty-five photo images. They can be pictures of pictures, with the background being a vital part of the work. They take months of study and then, in a moment the work is complete.

  • Scrolls made of a canvas material with high-quality photo images. The scrolls, hung with twine,are more ‘organic’ in presentation. There is no mat, gloss, or framing per se, and yet the white space surrounding the images is a pivotal part of the work. The scrolls move with the passage of air. The outside edges curl slightly according to temperature and relative humidity.

The energy coming from the Unconscious is vital to whatever format is being explored. The context of the presentation is instrumental in sharing the discovery of the work. To quote writer Alan Watts

“A frame outlines a universe.”

I am blessed to work with master framers and image printers, foremost among which, Jon Peterson of Arts District Imageworks.

All work is of museum-grade quality. For details of materials, feel free to contact me.