Art has always been a part of my life. I cannot remember a time that I was not drawing. My mother and father encouraged my interests. At age ten I was interested in photography so my father turned our garage into a darkroom. I was interested in woodworking and my father built a woodworking shop out back. That led to woodcarving which led to sculpture. Through high school and college I focused primarily on photo-realistic pencil drawings and watercolor painting.
I was born and raised in the great City of Charleston, SC. I graduated from Harding University in 1989 with biology and chemistry majors. I moved back home to Charleston, SC and opened a Cellular Phone Store. I enrolled in the first Physician Assistant program at The Medical University of South Carolina in 1996. Upon graduation I moved to Asheville, NC and began working for Carolina Hand Surgery. In 2005, As a Physician Assistant in hand surgery, I was fortunate to meet and perform surgery on the master artist Benjamin Long IV. In the fall of 2005 I enrolled in his school of fine art, The Fine Arts League of the Carolinas, and spent the next three years in his full time intensive classical drawing and painting program.
In September 2008 I accepted the honor of becoming the apprentice of Maestro Long who was the apprentice of the Italian master Pietro Annigoni. I work in his studio daily honing my skill as a draughtsman and painter in oils and fresco. My focus is portraiture, still-life, landscape and narrative figure art. My goal is to create public art: sculptures, paintings, drawings and frescoes after the tradition of the old masters.
I believe art happens when skill meets vision. Many people have vision with no talent to bring their vision into the world. Many people have incredible talent, with nothing to say with their art. When both talent and vision meet in visual form, it is moving. It is art.
The secret to life is that it is a shared experience. We are at our best in this life when we share what we have been blessed with. I have been blessed to learn a little about drawing and painting and I enjoy sharing that with students as an instructor at The Fine Arts League of the Carolinas.
