As a child I loved art, mechanical toys, trains and erector sets. My mother stressed throughout my childhood that I should never become an artist because “artists can never make a living.” Therefore, as I approached the end of high school, I settled on a career in engineering.

The day I signed up for Mechanical Engineering Technology at Temple, I knew I had chosen the wrong field. But I finished the program and worked as a mechanical designer and draftsman for 3-1/2 years. I worked my way into technical illustration, took some courses at the Philadelphia College of Art (now the University of the Arts), and found a job as an artist at a marketing firm. After four years as an Art Director, I was promoted to Creative Director, moved on to a job at an advertising firm, and then formed my own design business in 1978.

Since 1968, I have illustrated and painted. In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s I was fascinated with the surrealists. By the mid-70s, after years as a draftsman, I produced a large body of pen and ink drawings combining fantasy with historical themes. Large canvases with bold colors followed in the late-70s and ’80s.