Bio
My earliest memory of doing art was sitting on my father's lap in his architecture studio drawing stories on the many pads of paper and pencils that were found there. I remember him entertaining me by drawing tales of "Peter the Trapper" taking place in the "Wild West". Later on, Swiss grade school, art mostly consisted of "drawing in the lines" of mimeographed illustrations in machine-like plotter fashion using felt tip pens. You'd get points off for going beyond the lines!
My father moved me to the parallel international school system, where I got to paint and draw with total freedom! Even so, it took me a few years to undo the mental strictures placed upon me by the Swiss School System.
In the American International School of Zurich, I was inspired by my art teacher, a 6 1/2 foot Dane, Paul Elben, who looked more suited to jump from a Viking Longboat to pillage a village, than someone who could produce the most amazing and delicate watercolor paintings!
He convinced me to be the first to do the Advanced Placement Art curriculum. Together with the only other student, Gerry Ledesma, we tried to make sense of the curriculum written in "pure bull-crit" as Paul put it. A visit to head curator of the Zurich "Kunsthaus" -- Switzerland's equivalent of New York's MOMA -- confirmed Paul's opinion. "Just take a guess at what they mean. Or better yet, make something up!", he said.
At Brown University the quantitative world and the artistic world seemed to have nothing to do with each other. I resigned myself to having those worlds be separate in any future caree
I studied Operations Research – the discipline that uses Applied Mathematics to make the most of an organization’s ability to decide and act with constrained resources.
At Brown University, the Art Program was difficult to get into -- even with full Advanced Placement Art credits I waited in a long line on Registration Day that was reminiscent of the "Last Chopper from Saigon" scene, and found out that the nearby Rhode Island School of Design had a joint agreement and far more open slots. So I took all of my subsequent art classes there -- it was a humbling experience. I learned how to figure draw and compose, and the instructors expressed surprise when I said that I'd thought they kick me out, because the students were so good compared to me. One instructor said, "you don't get many artists who are engineers at the same time!"
In a way, in the years since, both the "left brain" and the "right brain" have been coming together as, in my art, I've been looking for new ways to do art, starting with chalk pastels in the late 80's and, in the 2000's, using acrylic media and Photoshop.
Nowadays I often produce a draft in Photoshop to get the composition right, before grabbing a brush or a pastel. Then, while the artwork is in progress, I will take a picture of it, and load it into Photoshop to explore possible avenues safely before committing to a path.
Were life like that! But then again, where would the adventure be in that?
My father moved me to the parallel international school system, where I got to paint and draw with total freedom! Even so, it took me a few years to undo the mental strictures placed upon me by the Swiss School System.
In the American International School of Zurich, I was inspired by my art teacher, a 6 1/2 foot Dane, Paul Elben, who looked more suited to jump from a Viking Longboat to pillage a village, than someone who could produce the most amazing and delicate watercolor paintings!
He convinced me to be the first to do the Advanced Placement Art curriculum. Together with the only other student, Gerry Ledesma, we tried to make sense of the curriculum written in "pure bull-crit" as Paul put it. A visit to head curator of the Zurich "Kunsthaus" -- Switzerland's equivalent of New York's MOMA -- confirmed Paul's opinion. "Just take a guess at what they mean. Or better yet, make something up!", he said.
At Brown University the quantitative world and the artistic world seemed to have nothing to do with each other. I resigned myself to having those worlds be separate in any future caree
I studied Operations Research – the discipline that uses Applied Mathematics to make the most of an organization’s ability to decide and act with constrained resources.
At Brown University, the Art Program was difficult to get into -- even with full Advanced Placement Art credits I waited in a long line on Registration Day that was reminiscent of the "Last Chopper from Saigon" scene, and found out that the nearby Rhode Island School of Design had a joint agreement and far more open slots. So I took all of my subsequent art classes there -- it was a humbling experience. I learned how to figure draw and compose, and the instructors expressed surprise when I said that I'd thought they kick me out, because the students were so good compared to me. One instructor said, "you don't get many artists who are engineers at the same time!"
In a way, in the years since, both the "left brain" and the "right brain" have been coming together as, in my art, I've been looking for new ways to do art, starting with chalk pastels in the late 80's and, in the 2000's, using acrylic media and Photoshop.
Nowadays I often produce a draft in Photoshop to get the composition right, before grabbing a brush or a pastel. Then, while the artwork is in progress, I will take a picture of it, and load it into Photoshop to explore possible avenues safely before committing to a path.
Were life like that! But then again, where would the adventure be in that?
