The countryside around San Luis Obispo is absolutely Georgous!

I remember as a kid going out to the country with my Mom while she painted watercolor Landscapes. I was always being tutored on how see to the world around me. The light, the composition of a scene or view.

Later on Mom started working on new directions in the studio. The studio was a cool place for me to play, and her new work was exciting. Oil painting on canvas, in the figurative and still life mode with an occasional Portrait. There was an occasional model or friend around being painted or drawn. This was Art School for Me through osmosis. The foundation of my career was being laid!

When Mom married John Badgley, the Architect, I was exposed to a whole new World. 3-Dimensional Art, Art you live in! Art and Architecture! Those two worlds were Hot topics in the late 50’s into the 60’s. We had a lot of family friends who were Artists, Professors, and Intellectuals. The “Beat” movement was in full swing and we spent some time in Big Sur with those Artist friends and their kids. It was “Wild Times” always!

As a Family we would often visit the Museums and Galleries in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Always seeing as much art as we could. During those field trips it was Picasso that got My attention.

As the sixties approached, the Abstract and Figurative Expressionists were forging their way into San Francisco. These Painters: Hassel Smith, Nathan Olivera, Richard Diebenkorn, David Park, Joan Brown, and Elmer Bishoff, among others, were doing amazing things with Paint! Mom and her Friends were doing the same thing on the Central Coast. Those Friends, Channing Peake, Howard Bradshaw, Dorothy Bowman, and Jack Oggsberger, were all very close to our Family. Channing Peake had actually worked with Picasso, drawing bulls, and knew other famous Artists. He Introduced Me to Rufino Tomayo, a Master Mexican Painter, at an opening in San Francisco in the late 70’s. Awsome!

Mom and Channing Peake had a special Creative Relationship. That relationship was reflected in a show entitled, , “A Place and Time”, was presented at the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art in 2012. That show took me right back to my childhood, watching Mom paint. I would later (late 70’s) spend a week with Channing Peake in his studio in Santa Barbara, CA. We painted together, talked about Abstract Art, went to Museums, and met collectors. He was my idol for a long time to come!

After moving to San Francisco in the mid 1960’s, I started my life as a Painter!

I got hooked to the Hard Edge style, which I believe came to from moving to the big City. I used this time to also teach myself Color. The fields of color between the straight lines were a good place for me to develop my Spectrum, so to speak. I also got some help at the City Collage of San Francisco and Collage of Marin with Technique and Mediums. I evolved out of the Hard Edge style eventually into the more fluid, abstract work that I saw when I was young. Abstract Expressionism. I am Still working that way today, though much evolved, and working with the Figure as well.

As for Architecture? I have also developed the business of painting houses for a living, the Day job! Using what I learned from my parents, developing my sense of color, and as an artist, my ability to visualize, has allowed me to work on some of the Most Beautiful houses. None of my learning to see, feel, and express, has been wasted.