From the time I was old enough to hold a crayon and model clay, creating images and objects with my hands has excited me. Despite my early fascination, I didn’t get serious about art until halfway through college when I switched from journalism to art. I studied painting under Donald Roller Wilson who gave me a solid grounding in the methods and approaches of the old masters. In addition to the sheer joy of painting, the thing that fascinated me most was light: how it falls on objects to reveal their form, and how it can be used to reveal the hearts of people.

After a year and a half striving to capture the visual world on canvas, the fruit of all my study suddenly came together. It was like opening my eyes for the first time; I was suddenly able to see the world in an analytical way. My brain began automatically breaking everything into patterns of light and dark and color.

That development not only shaped my art, but unexpectedly changed my life. It was a crucial element that opened me to a personal encounter with Jesus Christ. He turned my world upside down and began to transform me from the inside out.

Since then, I’ve been like a kid in the best toy store ever, constantly amazed by the world we inhabit. I craft my paintings to share that sense of wonderment. Landscapes present a perfect opportunity to express God’s majesty in creation.  In paintings of people I delve into the joys, pains and frailties of human life, and God’s love for us.

In 1979 I married Randi Zeinfeld, also an artist, and a woman whose spiritual direction complemented mine. Following a shared desire to reach out to hurting people, we bought a large, dilapidated house in a blighted inner-city neighborhood. Over the years we’ve hosted a range of folks from homeless individuals to Central America refugees. As we had the resources and time, we rehabbed the house and filled it with five children of our own.

Even with all this going on, I continued to forge ahead as a painter. Over the years, I’ve won numerous awards, exhibited in scores of galleries and participated in many individual and group shows. I handle a variety of genres, always seeking to capture that flash of revelation that I find everywhere – in the grandest landscape and the most mundane household object. I’m equally comfortable working in oil and acrylic, enjoying the unique benefits of each. Recently, I’ve been exploring new themes. Though rooted in the beauty around us, I’m creating images of unlikely realities to entice viewers to contemplate the course our lives and world are being swept on the tide of eternity.

Having acquired a lifetime of painting knowledge during my decades of “painting the wonder”, I also devote myself to passing it on before I do. In my painting classes, I teach skills to other artists so they can paint their own eye-opening moments.