MY STORY
I was born in Portland, Maine, shortly after the end of World War II. By the time I graduated from high school it seemed that I was destined to become an artist. From 1964 until 1969, I attended the Portland School of Art now called the Maine College of Art and Design. After graduation I joined the U.S. Army, spending one year in Pleiku, South Vietnam, as a combat artist and jeep driver. In 1971, I left the Army and enrolled at RISD for my MFA. In 1976 I began a twenty-five-year teaching studio art at Emmanuel College in Boston, MA.
Making art has always been a central part of my life. My influences are many but my primary influences are my own personal experiences and travel. I am an artist who works primarily in lithography and digital imagery creating one-of-a-kind prints as well as editions. I am also a creator of Artist Books as well as trade books.
After returning from the war in Vietnam I completed a series of prints and paintings done as my protest against that war and all wars. The war ended in 1975, as did my antiwar series. Over the next six years I went on to complete a series of lithographs of a woman I created from my mind. I simply wanted to create beautiful images after concentrating on war images for so many years. These images were very commercially successful but no longer fulfilling. by 1979, I ended that series and struggled to find another subject.
In 1987, I returned to Vietnam for the first of what was to become nearly fifty trips there. What I saw quickly gave me a subject for my artwork like Ho Chi Min and Agent Orange and a direction for my life - the founding of the non-profit organization named the Indochina Arts Partnership (IAP) in 1988, to develop cultural, artistic and educational exchanges between the U.S. and Vietnam. This included curating exhibitions As Seen by Both Sides: American and Vietnamese Artists Look at the War and An Ocean Apart, Contemporary Vietnamese Art from the United States and Vietnam. The IAP also provided Vietnamese artists with residency grants to travel to the U.S. to meet with artists and others, and published several books on Vietnamese art and culture. In 2002, I was awarded a grant as a Fulbright Senior Scholar and my wife and I lived in Hanoi, Vn for two years. We presently live in Wellesley, MA with our two adult children and the four grandchildren who live nearby.
In 2016, I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease which was most likely caused by my exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam. I resigned as director of the IAP and went back to my studio to explore this major life change through my art. Inspired by a CAT scan ordered by my neurologist combined with some “selfies” and lithographs, I created a new body of work. I continue working on exploring this subject.