Website under construction! The content below is from the years in Houston.

See my recent work, the career crown jewel monumental history mural (a portion seen below) here: Ukiah Valley - Past, Present & Future

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Imagine yourself seated--nay, enthroned--at the center of a 16th century palace, with an oval hall before you. Behind and above is a canopied throne.
 
 

To the right, as you sit, a portico with gold-leafed Corinthian columns gives onto a formal garden beneath a daramatic sky. The imagery was painted in acrylic on canvas on panels, which were then installed.  I couldn't have painted this one on site.  The panels are 8 ft. high, but the floor measurment of the room is only 59 x 35 inches.

The funny thing about this "environment" is that it really does contain a "throne", as seen at the right: an extra-tall toilet with built-in bidet. This was the initial concept of the family, but the project blossomed into much more. My background in Art History is very much in evidence in the oppulent Baroque and Renaissance architecture. The doctor who commissioned this work is now giving thought to transforming her other 1/2-bath into a Medieval chapel... *POSTSCRIPT: When the couple divorced, the doctor retained cusody of her bathroom.

The three images above show the viewer's progression into the realm of fantasy. One's gaze wanders through a series of doorways and decorated chambers with a glowing chandelier in the last. All of this, including a standing statue of Aphrodite,  is painted on the back of the actual door to the room. ( A hinge and a bit of the marble terrazzo floor can be  seen at the lower left. )

Landscape has become one of my favorite subjects, and this mural started it all.

My long time friend Tundra Tom Faess invited me to paint a mural on the headquarters of his company, Great Canadian Ecoventures, in Yellowknife, capital of Canada's Northwest Territories.

Painted in exterior latex housepaint, the picture combines day, sunset and night; spring and fall; and depicts the open tundra, with arctic wolves, caribou, grizzlies musk-ox, and a gyrfalcon.

A pure and passionate love of that land is what inspired this painting. I have spent time in that wild place, and its silence, its beautiful colors, its sweet perfumed air, its rock and water will never leave my heart.

Over the years and after having small children, I've become fast and efficient ( though still dedicated to leisure and sensory indulgance ). This project was complete in just two weeks, leaving enough time for me to fly out to the base camp in Tom's float plane on a gorgeous sunny day that was so windy the mosquitos were all blown away and so inviting that I walked right down the sandy beach and into the clear arctic waters of Whitefish Lake.
 

That mural painted for a place I loved so much was destroyed, but I had the opportunity to paint a new one. Read the Tundra Love Story.

This mural was painted on a food court booth at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. It is done in acrylic on panels and depicts a nostalgiac remembrance of a bygone era.
 
 

The stories are in the details, from a little girl and her doll watching a man whittle, to boys playing with marbles and a hoop, a couple on their promenade, two immigrant women talking and more.

This two-sided business sign for Buchanan's Native Plants, in the Houston Heights, needed not only to be bright and fresh and attract attention, but also to be ACCURATE in its flora, given the nature of the establishment

.Not just any old flower from my imagination would do, no matter how sumptuous or other-worldly it might be.

Hence, the plants in both panels, from left to right, are antique roses (Souvenir de la Malmaison), Blue-eyed Grass, Liatris, Rudbeckia, Echinacea (Purple Cone Flower), Gaillardia, Varigated Liriope, and Salvia Leucantha.
 
 

The subtleties of the Liatris may be seen here.
 
 
 

A sign that is not only eye-catching, but has the individuality of a painting sets your business apart.

This project was both a very large mural AND a multiple business sign. It's bright colors transformed the rather plain cinder block building in Yellowknife, NWT, Canada.

The side is very long, as well as relatively unblocked by neighboring structures, and its focus is the inviting, friendly entry way, seen here with Mary Rocher, matriarch of the family enterprises.

The concept of this couple was not only to advertise, but also to express their vision of the various peoples of the North working together in cooperation. The images painted around the circle illustrate shelters and structures built by the Inuit, the Native Americans, the early trappers and settlers and modern Canadians.

The Snowy Owl is a symbol of the Inuit.  The red, yellow, black and white sash behind it is part of the traditional dress of the Metis, the descendants of French trappers and coureurs de bois and Native people.

The tipi, the hunters' tent and especially the drum represent the Natives indigenous to this area, whose own name for themselves is "Dene",meaning "the people".

I was pleased to work with Manuel and Marta Jorge and to help give form to their vision.

This project came at the very end of one of my visits and time was so short that I had ensconced myself with a pot of coffee in their big work space to paint all night. When they left me, the sign was bare except for the letters.

When they came down before breakfast in the morning to see how much I could possibly have finished, or if I might be curled up in exhaustion, they were shocked and also very happy...It was done!

(I don't know how it happened. Actually, I do. The muse visited me, as she always does....at some point!)
 

After I painted a few commercial trucks in Canada, it dawned on me that living in the artcar capital of the world ( Houston, Texas), I really ought to paint my own vehicle, which is a 1985 Toyota Corolla.

A car like this doesn't have a huge surface area, but if there's anything an artist knows how to do, it's pack in the imagery.

Thus, the driver's side depicts Texas, including the Hill Country (with a galloping white stallion), the desert and cacti of Big Bend, and the Rio Grande valley.
 

The passenger's side shows the north, with  wolves, tundra, mountains, an alpine stream and the sea, which then shifts.....

to southern waters, dolphins and undersea coral.

The hood is painted with a palace scene...
 

The car was painted entirely by brush, with exterior latex housepaint over a universal primer applied to the lightly sanded car paint.