My Story
By education and profession an engineer, I’ve been a lifelong “dabbler” in art, music, and writing. Born in Augusta, Georgia, I slowly migrated North. making it as far as Maryland, where I ended a government career as a Branch Head at a now defunct U.S. Navy Research facility.
All told my professional career spanned a bit more than half a century. We moved to King George in 1983 and built a home. Around 2010, I began a marginally graceful transition from being a full-time defense consultant who dabbled in art and music to a stringed instrument maker and artist who dabbled in consulting when I couldn’t avoid it. Happily, I learned to avoid it a while back.
Like most “retired” people I hang with, I’m wondering where I found the time to do any of it.
I cannot overstate the importance of being part of a community of watermedia artists, musicians, writers and friends all of whom can be generally categorized as seekers of meaning and understanding.
The following is the Artist’s Statement that I settled on some years some years ago:
“Dabbling is one thing; being an artist is something else again: For me a lifelong exercise in humility. The finished work never coincides with what I’d hoped it would look like. When something I do captures the feeling I was after well enough for someone else to share it, I’m happy. On those rare occasions when the result is something better than I aimed for, I’m deeply grateful for the miracle. I have come to believe this. Regardless of the subject, regardless of the medium or style, art is first, last, and always about feeling. Whether photo-realistic or purely abstract/non-representational, the end purpose of art is to faithfully (i.e., with fidelity) communicate the truth of what the artist sees and feels.
The same can be said of music, writing, . . . of Life itself.
Still a work in progress.
Originally posted in 2017, edited/Updated 15 January 2024