My Story

Since Then

Since December 2021 I have completed over 100 original oil paintings — landscapes, portraits, wildlife, florals, abstracts, still life, and architectural subjects. Several hang in the Kore Gallery in Louisville, Kentucky. In early 2027 I will have my first personal show, which will include a thematic series of five moon paintings titled "Moon Moods".

My wife Carol has also taken up painting since I returned to the canvas. She has lived with multiple sclerosis for over forty years and paints with compromised manual dexterity — and she produces work of genuine beauty and ambition. She chose nebulas as her subject. I could not be more proud of the paintings she has created.

 The Disconnect

When I finish a painting and stand back to look at it, something remarkable happens every time. Intellectually I know I painted it. But on another level — it is hard to believe I created something so beautiful.

I have experienced this disconnect across sixty years of painting and three and a half years of serious daily work. I have come to understand that it is not self-doubt. It is the signature of genuine creative flow — the experience of a work that came through you rather than from you.

That feeling is what I want to give every student I teach.

What I Teach

I teach landscape painting — not because it is the only subject worth painting, but because it is the most complete training ground in all of oil painting. Every fundamental skill a painter needs can be learned through landscape painting and then applied to any subject: portraits, wildlife, florals, abstracts, still life, architecture.

The landscape is the vehicle. Oil painting is the destination.

Before we ever discuss brushes or paint or canvas, we begin with observation. With truly seeing. With the understanding that the difference between a flat painting and a beautiful one is not talent — it is how deeply you have learned to look.

I spent fifty years as a surgeon teaching complex procedures to medical residents. You do not learn microsurgery by watching a master and hoping inspiration strikes. You learn by understanding the sequence, practicing each step, over and over again in a laboratory, and building confidence through repetition.

Painting is the same.

There are four disciplines that have defined my life — and in each of them, I have experienced the same thing.

In a surgical theater. The preparation complete. The instruments ready. The procedure beginning. I would take a breath, make the first incision, and feel the shift — the conscious planning mind stepping back, the trained hands taking over, the work proceeding with a kind of quiet certainty that I could not have manufactured by trying harder. Fifty years of surgery. That shift happened thousands of times. It never lost its quality.

On a ski slope. Forty years of standing at the top of a challenging run and facing the same choice. I could stand there worrying — cataloguing the risks, second-guessing my ability, rehearsing what could go wrong. Or I could take a few deep breaths, push off, and trust that forty years of conditioned reflexes in my legs and feet knew exactly what to do if I stayed out of their way. I always pushed off. I always got down the hill.

In my garden. In my greenhouse. Standing before an orchid that is struggling and trying to understand what it needs. I have tended a flower garden since I was twelve years old on a farm in Kentucky. I built a greenhouse onto my home in Louisville and at one point was raising and caring for three thousand orchid plants simultaneously. My current garden grows two palm trees in a climate that should not support them. They are, against all reasonable expectation, thriving. Growing things requires exactly what surgery requires — patient observation, sensitivity to light and color and temperature, the willingness to see what is actually there rather than what you expect to find. I have never stopped doing this. I never intend to.

And in my living room in Louisville, standing in front of a canvas. This one surprised me most when it returned — because it had been thirty years away. The sketch done. The composition transferred. The structural decisions made on paper where they cost nothing to get wrong. I pick up a brush. And the same thing happens. The shapes arrive without my consciously placing them. The details come without my thinking about them individually. I am not planning. I am not calculating. I am simply painting — and the painting is happening through me rather than by me.

Four disciplines. Eight decades. One experience — lived not once, but continuously, across an entire life.

Take a breath. See what is actually there. Trust what has been prepared. Get out of the way.

For You

My introductory landscape painting course is designed for retiring and recently retired professionals and executives who have always wanted to paint and are finally ready to begin. No prior experience required. No special talent required. Just the desire to create something genuinely beautiful — and the willingness to truly learn to see and take the time to learn the basics.

I turned 86 in November of 2025. I returned to painting at 81. I tell you this not to impress you, but because I know what is holding you back. The feeling that it is too late. That too much time has passed.

It has not. It never does.

The window is not closing. It has always been open.

Push off down the hill.