What is your medium now? (oils, acrylic, pastel, watercolor...) What medium have you always wanted to use, but haven't yet? What mediums have you used in the past? Why do you prefer your current medium?

I have painted with most mediums, but currently work in oil. Oil gives me more dimensions (texture, flow, reworking, opacity, transparency), than other 2D mediums. I paint on 1/2" MDF wood panels, they are less susceptible than canvas to perforation, and mold damage, and the smooth surface records the brush strokes more readily than the relief of the canvas.

On the monthly paintouts, how do you decide what to paint? What draws your eye to a particular scene?

I try to challenge myself, and collect an oil sketch library of different lighting, and seasonal conditions. I look for a viewpoint that will allow this, that is the theory anyway.

Do you make preliminary sketches before painting your subject? In a sketchbook? Or directly on the canvas or paper? Why?

I usually make larger paintings from successful smaller oil studies. Sketches are vital especially when a painting is a derived composition, that is a non literal derivation from the ideals of the scene; such a painting is actually an abstraction, or an exploration of a particular visual element. I usually abstract the "heroic" elements of the landscape…grand composition, dramatic weather and lighting, noble cliffs, an expansive tranquil lake. George Inness, Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Moran and Scott Christensen paint in the American heroic tradition.

Do you give workshops? Own a gallery? Author a book? Lecture? Participate in competitions (either as a painter or judge)? Describe your experiences.

I have given portrait painting workshops, and am slowly working on a landscape painting book.

Though most of us prefer working outdoors, do you prefer a studio where you live or maintaining a separate space? Why?

The ideal would be the live scene, combined with studio equipment, unchanging light and unlimited time. I try to wring all I can from each.

Can you describe a comical situation that occurred during one of your painting sessions?

People at the Maryland Heights overlook at Harpers Ferry clapped for me when I recovered after doing a face plant at the outer tip of the rocks.

How do you measure your personal progress as an artist, (I am not referring to sales or shows)?

One ongoing bench mark is a sort of mild dissatisfaction with paintings that I once held in awe and inapproachability; they become attainable as I gain skill and experience.

What do you think creates artistic blocks? How do you solve them?

A block is often an underdeveloped "critical eye". Cultivating a critical or selective eye is the turning point in virtually every artist's life. It is selecting and using, not literally recording the elements of the scene, sketch, idea or photo. A good example is the work of Scott Christensen, look at his website or books, and see that he paints a "symbol" of a tree, not a literal tree, he selects, clarifies, emphasizes, or eliminates each element according to his critical judgment, to arrive at his ideal for that painting.

Many of the paintings I see would be better paintings if there was a greater depth of lights and darks. Insufficient contrast can foil an otherwise well made painting. I think decisive brush strokes (even if muted) are inspiring, timidity is not inspiring. At age 48 I am finally starting to learn some of this and incorporate it into my paintings. I admire anyone who has the courage and perseverance to paint.

Let's talk about the creativity - where do you think the need to "create" comes from? (spiritual. intellectual, physical, etc.)

Our aesthetic sense is inborn, and is a product and likeness of the principle of our creation (God). It is in God's nature to create (he is all, actualized, has no potential), and is also perfect order of every virtue…beauty, love, loyalty, logic, even heroic landscape drama! We are all formed and forced to create, each in a different venue. No one is satisfied in doing nothing.

The beauty of a painting is an ideal vivified by exploration and recreation by the viewer. The ordered, patterned ideal of a farm field, made new, and more by the beauties of circling hedge rows and tree lines, explored to a new depth by circumstances of lighting, all satisfyingly recreated in the mind and soul of the viewer. Now that's a painting.

How do you feel about art education - the value of a college degree, attending workshops, etc.? Art School vs a liberal arts education? Which path did you follow?

I have painted since I was 13 years old. My college degree is in electrical engineering and not art. The great thing about an individual skill is that it is just that, skill and not title. It is of no importance where the skill is acquired, but that it is acquired. As a practical matter the attainment of artistic skills comes almost entirely from self study, and over years, even in a classroom.

Which artists (past or present) do you turn to for inspiration? Why?

My favorite artists are John Singer Sargent, Ernest Blumenschein, and Herbert Dunton. The last two combined figures and the landscape, and in a magnificent, heroic, and emotional manner using alternative brush work, form modeling, and composition.