Biographical Information:
Born on the Dakota prairie where I spent the first 13 years of my life. I was fortunate to attend a one-room country school during my early years.
The farm population in our area was ethnically diverse, coming mainly from the central European countries. As a result, I grew up in a rich cultural milieu characterized by a love of nature – the land and the varied living forms which inhabited this land.
Riding across the fields on a bitter cold winter night in a horse-drawn sleigh with my family and my grandparents was an experience I have relived many times throughout my life. The sky was full of stars, and often the northern lights or the milky way added to the wonderment. If there happened to be a moon, the moonlight turned the snow covered fields into diamonds.
Growing up in such a wondrous land where each season brought its own unique beauty instilled in me a deep and lasting love of nature and its creatures. Lacking the ability to paint with a brush, I learned to paint pictures with my camera. My love of photography has brought me indescribable joy and a sense of fulfillment for a half century of my life.
Artist Statement:
Photography has become my passion because of the sense of creation and joy it creates in me. I have a deep appreciation for beauty in its natural or man-made form. A beautiful tableau which I happen upon unexpectedly in my daily routine never fails to evoke an emotional response in me. I can look at one of my images which I may have taken decades ago and I will experience that same emotion I experienced when I painted that image with my camera.
I love the challenge that photography conveys. A given scene whether it depicts the rolling hills in the Palouse area of Southeastern Washington or the Neddick Light in York, Maine is rather constant. What changes is the surrounding environment. The challenge is to compose a photograph which incorporates these temporal environmental changes which may be as transient as the clouds or longer lasting as the colors of autumn foliage to create an image of heretofor undiscovered beauty.
It is serendipity when I sense that someone viewing one of my pictures experiences an emotional reaction.
Affiliations:
Pasadena Society of Artists
Education
B.A. Psychology, University of Minnesota
M.H.A. University of Minnesota
A.B.D. Unversity of Minnesota
