Steel, sheetrock dust, linseed oil, the sweet sour smell of oakum, melting lead, and hot blacktop greeted me at 6 a.m. when my father and I rolled in together for work on construction sites where I worked in the summers;  Dad owned a construction company.

My mother was a painter.                                                           We lived on a river town on Lake Erie where lake freighters offloaded iron ore, coal, and grain. There also was a canal that ran several miles off the Huron River to a town nearby where lumber was unloaded, fresh cut and fragrant from Michigan or Canada. Our beaches were much like Long Island in the summers-  fishing boats, summer vacationers from Cleveland and New York,wild parties on the beach at night with monumental bonfires.
   The Erie Native Americans historically had lived a stones throw from my childhood house on the lake and traces of their longhouses, burial mounds, and ceremonial objects still existed when I was a kid.                                                                                           My family came to Ohio (the Firelands) from Connecticut after the Revolutionary War and their daily life was centered around negotiating food, land, borders, goodwill, and game with the same Erie Indians. Before the Revolutionary war in Connecticut, my family was strong into the international sailing trade in New London.
   I was born in 1943, my childhood was in part spent scanning the skies for enemy planes and getting under my desk to practice in preparation for a nuclear bomb. I went to public school and then was sent to Military School during high school.
   I then attended Ohio State University and promised my dad I would be a mechanical engineer, but I got to registartion and took an art course on a lark, and I knew immediately what my life would be and have never looked back. Art became the engine on my train, and when I have strayed from that I have paid dearly in deep ways. I was graduated Cum Laude, with a BFA in printmaking and painting and a minor in English. I studied in the Ames Perception Laboratory at the OSU department which had a deep effect on my latter work in painting and photography. My mentors at Ohio State also taught Roy Lichtenstein and I know it deeply influenced him and many others painters.
   I went on to get my MFA in painting and photography at Rutgers
University with a full scholarship where I studied with Bob Watts, 

who was instrumental in founding the Fluxus movement.
   I moved to New York City in 1968 where I apprenticed with several leading photographers and founded my own studio there in 1975. I went on to become an award winning photographer, known for my painterly unconventional photographs. My work was primarily conceptual still life although at the end of my career, I did large shoots for 'big pharma' that involved large crews, rafts of models, and extensive locations - complex large shoots lasting many days and sometimes more.
I was represented by Photonica, Getty Images, and Corbis. I did high profile work for magazines (many cover images), advertising agencies and design firms. I shot for many of the fortune 500 companies,
In 2005 I transitioned from photography and have since then
devoted myself entirely to painting.
   In 2016 I had a sold out show at the Prospect Range of 28 paintings of the Gowanus Canal at night. Half the thrill of this show was not getting caught and beat up at night while trespassing near the canal, doing the source photos for the paintings.
I now work in my studio in Brooklyn where I also live.
   

I can be reached using the Contact Form
   

I am represented by Dexter Buell at the Prospect Range Gallery

in Brooklyn: 917-776-6834 or: dexter.buell@gmail.com