My paintings drawings and etchings are influenced by the contrasting mix of objects, images, and places—natural/man-made, native/non-native, local/imported, domestic/foreign—that make up our modern environment. Cut apple blossoms from a midwestern backyard are placed next to a potted Arizona cactus. A pet parrot from the Amazon roams through a New York City apartment. Our travels bring us an Iowa landscape one day, and a view of the Tuscan hills on the next. We can visit zoos and natural history museums and see native local animals side by side with animals taken from other parts of the world. There are places where we can see in a single view the simultaneous destruction and preservation of a landscape. In my current home in Savannah, Georgia, I watch alligators and wading birds in our local wildlife refuge against a backdrop of smog-spewing factories. For the last decade, I have been intrigued by the idea of “wilderness” and its change from being something mysterious and unknown (pre-twentieth century) to being longed for, romanticized, mourned and desperately reconstructed. I have deep feelings about environmental issues, but I don’t see the focus of my work as didactic. My paintings and drawings often reflect my own struggle to make sense of this chaos. I see my pieces as a catalyst for thinking about and discussing issues that address the influence that human beings have on the “natural” environment and the way in which the natural environment responds. There have been several key influences in the development of my ideas and compositions: artists of the Renaissance, especially Albrecht Durer; Chicago painter Ivan Albright with his overly-active surfaces; Mexican artist Remedios Varo, who creates finely-crafted, ethereal worlds; and early 18th- and 19th-century renderings of flora and fauna, especially the work of John James Audubon. The Netherlandish still life and hunt scene painters—Frans Snyders, Rachel Ruysch, and Willem Kalf—have probably had the strongest influence on my work. I have always been drawn to the technical/formal aspects of these paintings. But more than that, I find many societal parallels between the 21st-century United States and 17th-century Holland—both societies being comprised of numerous wealthy consumers able to import food, objects, flora and fauna from all over the world. Non-painting/drawing sources have made a significant impact on my work. Many of my compositions derive their artificiality and crowded arrangements from the often unsettling natural history displays of the Field Museum in Chicago. The novels of Gunter Grass and the films of Peter Greenaway have focused my attention on rituals related to food and possession. Travel writing by naturalists like Peter Matthiessen has led to the inclusion of exotic and threatened habitats in the background of many pieces. The manner in which I arrive at a composition reflects a 21st-century perception of the world; a perception that is comprised of groups of disconnected images usually removed from the viewer's direct experience. To reflect this way of perceiving, I collect and combine images from many sources: books, catalogs, magazines, photos that I have taken, sketches, and direct observation. I often combine disparate light sources. The challenge for me is to use the imposed structure of traditional representational drawing and painting to unify all of these elements compositionally. I was born on February 2, 1965 in an apartment in Erie, Pennsylvania—a small industrial great lakes city in the northwestern part of the state. When I was 11, my family moved to a farm in the surrounding hilly countryside, where I spent many hours drawing cartoons and exploring the surrounding woodlands learning about birds and animals. After graduating from high school, I moved to Columbus, Ohio to attend the Columbus College of Art and Design, where I received a BFA in painting in 1988. After taking a year off, I received a teaching assistantship from Northwestern University and moved to Chicago, where I received an MFA in painting in 1991. I lived in Chicago until 2001. It is in this wonderful city that I established myself as an artist— balancing numerous adjunct teaching jobs with my own studio work. In 1995, I took my first trip out of the country, to Italy, and developed an addiction to international travel and learning languages. Since then, I have taken several trips to Iceland and Italy as well trips to Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Zambia, and New Zealand. In 2001, I moved to Savannah, Georgia to be closer to semi-wild areas and to teach fulltime at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). I resigned from SCAD in 2006 to devote myself to my studio work, but decided that Savannah was still a good place for me to live and to make art. The landscape and wildlife of the "Low Country" contrasted by the rampant development/destruction of marshes and woodlands has greatly impacted my work. I currently live with my wife, Pamela, and four cats in a place where I thankfully never have to experience another winter.