Spori Building

This pen and ink montage illustration represents my years at junior college, where I began my formal art training. At Ricks College (in Rexburg, Idaho) the Jacob Spori building was the art department, where I spent most of my time. The other objects and animals in this picture are symbolic of the instructors I studied under who had the most influence on me.

The Spori building was the oldest building on campus, built with stone from a local quarry in 1890. This picture has a particular nostalgia for me because the year after I graduated, the building was torn down for rebuilding. It caught fire and burned down during deomlition. The new building has a similar character to the old Spori building, but it will never be the same for me.

Reptile Studies

In preparation for my next painting, which is simmering inside my head, I have been going through old sketchbooks studying drawings that I did of lizards and similar creatures, and making new ones as well. Here are a few that I will be using as reference for the painting.



Reference being a very loose term. They will be sources for gesture, structure and textures, not copied directly into the painting.



All of these drawings were done from life. The first three were drawn with ink pens, at the Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.