My interest in wood began probably before I remember, before 40 years ago and counting. My father had a bunch of woodworking tools in the basement for making stuff round the house. I would watch him, the usual words from him were "watching is helping" then followed by an explanation of what he was doing interspersed a with the occasional obscenity.

It was in the Boy Scouts I got my first taste of carving, went to camp Decorah on the banks of the Black River with the idea to accumulate as many merit badges as possible. The most memorable of which where lifesaving, canoeing, forestry, bird watching, and lastly wood carving. Indeed it was a full plate of things that could be used for the rest of one's life.

Since that that time, have always been infatuated with carving and what the media is all about - trees. For the last 40 years I've always had a carving in progress, ready to fill idle time, to focus and forget about the rigors of life. The amount of life I have spent doing this has allowed me to accumulate a good set of working tools and knowledge on how to use them to effectively bring out the inner beauty that lies deep within the wood.

Aside from my woodcarving merit badge and shop class in high school I have had no formal training in woodcarving or sculpture. I am entirely self-taught from reading books and visiting galleries and museums and realizing what those people from distant areas have shown what wood and trees can offer. Perhaps the greatest influence on my work are the carvings coming out of Africa and the Pacific Northwest.