About the Artist

My wife Judy and I fish all over the world - for trout throughout the United States, for bonefish in Mexico and Belize, Atlantic salmon in Canada, and striped bass on East coast beaches. Now that we live out West, we're starting to try steelhead fishing on some of our northern California Rivers.

While still in neurosurgical practice in Cleveland, I decided to develop my skills as an artist. I took some lessons in Chagrin Falls, Ohio (by the way, the Chagrin River is home to some very good cold weather steelhead fishing) and since then, I've tried to improve my painting by taking workshops from such outstanding instructors as Fred Graff, Don Andrews and Frank Webb. I learn something new from each of them.

I've always admired the work of Winslow Homer, who was America's first sporting artist (and arguably America's greatest painter). His watercolors of hunting and fishing scenes in the Adirondacks and Florida are masterpieces. Sporting art is something of a niche specialty and not always known to the general public or the art world, but I believe some of this country's best painters are or were primarily sporting artists, and many concentrate on fly-fishing. In this category I'd include Ogden Pleissner, Peter Corbin, Chet Reneson and Thomas Aquinas Daly, among several others.

Most fishing artists are primarily landscape painters, picturing fisherman within the landscape. When I first started out, I decided to concentrate on the fishermen themselves, and to minimize the landscape. This tactic worked well, and my first one-man show in California was a success. I've been fortunate to have some of these paintings accepted in juried shows in Ohio and California, and won a prize at Art in the Redwoods in Gualala, California.

I've also branched out and occasionally do paintings of hunters, golfers or tennis players.

More recently, I've changed subjects and started to paint the flies that anglers use to catch fish. Many flies are works of art in themselves, and painting them has been an interesting challenge. These paintings will be the subjects of a show later this year.