Hidden Treasures Restoring Putah Creek

I was born in Berkeley, California and raised in a small agricultural town in the Sacramento Valley. As I was growing up my interest was in music, which I studied through High School. Sadly, I didn't have the talent for the performing arts so I moved on to other interests, especially radio and television production. It was during the summer of 1969 while I was working for CBS radio in New York City that I became drawn to the visual arts. During my lunch break, I would go across the street to the Museum of Modern Art and have my lunch sitting before Picasso's Guernica. (This was before it was returned to it's rightful home in Spain). Here was an extraordinary visual narrative that has been an inspiration for me both artistically and politically. My friends were involved in photography and soon I was reading their books by Henri Cartier Bresson and Minor White. I still have my copies of Ansel Adam's The Camera, The Print, and The Negative.

After I left New York, I acquired my first camera and began to experiment. I was trained as a still photographer, cinematographer and producer/director in television at the University of California, Davis in the late seventies. My interest in developing a narrative through still photography emerged from these earlier projects. As I was beginning to master the art of directing film and television I met a young photographer, Gabriel Unda, whose characteristic generosity led him to teach me most of what I know about photography today. This mentorship planted the seeds of craft and artistic vision that would develop much later. Although I produced a number of award winning documentaries during this period that focused on the challenges the disabled face in our culture, the world of film and television production wasn't offering the creative and personal challenge I was looking for. I began to think that I wanted more of a connection to the emotional experience of the subjects I was filming.

I left the world of electronic media and received a Ph.D. in clinical psychology, pursuing a career as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice. Working intimately with people exploring their stories and conflicts gave me the creative inspiration to more clearly understand the human experience in its many forms. This work offered the opportunity to develop my capacity at observation, understanding, metaphor and symbolic representation. The skills I acquired during my career as a therapist gave me the courage to continue to express myself artistically and creatively in ways I had not imagined possible. During this period I put the camera away, wondering if I might ever return to it again. I was traveling with my wife, Andrea, to Europe for the first time and took along my Leica to document our experience together. Looking at those images on the light box rekindled my love for photography and story telling. So, I picked up where I left off many years ago, now with a clearer understanding of where I might go and how I might get there. I am now pursuing both architectural and landscape photography; the latter, through a couple of different projects.

In 2011 I began work on a project entitled Close to Home. Taken within the city limits of Davis, California, the Close to Home portfolio is a series of images capturing the beauty of a town that is hiding in plain sight. It is a visual meditation on the intersection of community and nature and our connection to the natural world. In keeping with this theme, in 2014 I started exploring man's alteration of our environment in a project entitled Hidden Treasure: Restoring Putah Creek.

The image entitled Close to Home was recognized as Best of Show in the juried competition "Vision" by the Sacramento Fine Arts Center in 2012. It was a Bell Ringer for the KVIE Auction that same year. In October 2013, I was recognized as a Black And White Spider Awards nominee for my architectural image, Frank Gehry's House. Several other images from the Close To Home portfolio have been exhibited at the Viewpoint Photographic Art Center in Sacramento, CA and the Blue Line Gallery in Roseville, CA. Works from the Close To Home portfolio were exhibited in a solo show in January 2015 at Gallery 1855 in Davis, CA.

After Spring Rain, from the Close To Home portfolio, was acquired by the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, California for their permanent collection in February 2015.

I am represented by the art consulting firms Art Consulting Services in Sacramento, CA, DAC Art Consulting in Atlanta, GA and Kinzelman Art Consulting Houston, TX; the latter two, for my abstract architectural images.