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After attending Kansas City Art Institute on a full scholarship for two years I came to New York City where my older brother was experiencing a very successful art career. Through my brother's connections, I was soon working as a studio assistant for several artists who were popular and sucessful modernist painters. Though I loved abstraction and was impressed wih the milieu, I found myself drawn to the emerging music scene that was happening in downtown Manhattan.
The "No Wave" scene of the late 70’s and early 80’s in New York provided me with the energetic and uninhibited artistic activity that I needed. There were numerous venues for performing and several interesting musicians and people to collaborate with. I soon became involved with some very creative musicians and started performing and recording. Some of the ensembles and recordings that I worked with were: the Contortions, the Brian Eno-produced "No New York" album, Henry Flynt, James White and the Blacks, the Raybeats, Philip Glass, and performing and recording with the Philip Glass Ensemble. In the late 1980’s I started scoring animated films and wrote music and sound design for 15 Faith Hubley films until her death in 2001. Some of these films are in the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection.
In 1986 I went to visit a recluse farmer in the sandhills of Nebraska. It was there that I had the opportunity to become acquainted with and eventually rescue the lifework of one of America’s most important outsider artists, Emery Blagdon. Blagdon, a man with an 8th grade education, was a poor farmer who quit farming at the age of 47 and devoted the rest of his life (nearly 20 years) to the making of hundreds of beautiful, mysterious objects that he called Healing Machines. His courage and commitment has been a major inspiration.
In 1990, after finishing a film score, I took some time off and began meditating. This, I believe, led to the creation of several small abstract paintings on selected pieces of wood that I had been collecting for years. Stimulated and energized by this painting activity I returned to New York and began painting full time. In 1992 I received a NEA Fellowship in painting and that same year had my first solo exhibition in New York. I was awarded a NYFA Fellowship for painting in 1996 and have had numerous group exhibitions and other solo shows in the ensuing years.