My Story

My interest in art began when I was a boy. My grandmother, Jessie L. Berry, was an artist. She did mostly Texas Bluebonnet Landscapes and I was fascinated by her work. She began to teach me and by the time I was 12, I was painting in oil and pastels. Only two of my works from my boyhood and teen years have survived. An unfinished oil of a Blackfoot Indian, Mike Oka, and a still life of a vase of geraniums. If you are interested, click on the links here to see them.

I had my first, formal art course at the Addison Gallery of American Art when I was a student at Phillips Academy in 1950. I don't recall that I distinguished myself. I continued to paint with oils and one of my unfinished works, done at Andover, has survived and can be viewed here.

Later my interest turned to photography with the purchase of my first 35mm camera at the Fort Sam Houston, Texas PX when I was there as a young, reserve 2nd Lieutenant. This passion for capturing God's creation on film endures to this day.

Everything was put on hold, as I entered the University of Texas School of Dentistry in Houston, TX in 1960. After graduation, my interest in photography again bloomed, but it was not until I joined the faculty at UT Houston, that I really pursued it again. During my academic years, I imersed my self in the study of color, and applied this knowledge to my personal interest in photography. In the early 1990's I was fortunate to study landscape photography with Mark Nohl in Santa Fe, New Mexico.I developed and taught several workshops in intra-oral photography combined with general outdoor photography.

After my retirement from dentistry, I moved to the mountains of Utah and it was here that the grandeur of nature pulled me back to painting. I worked only in oil for a number of years, rediscovering pastels more recently.

I have found in pastels my true love. This is my only medium now. I am able to express my self in pastel better than ever before. As the poet, Gerard Manly Hopkins wrote, "The world is charged with the grandeur of God" and it is with pastel that I feel that I can best capture some of this grandeur.