Artist’s Biography

Recognized by art teachers in the early grades of elementary school as having a unique artistic talent, I spent several years in a gifted students visual art program at an early age. It was in this program that I first discovered oil paints. I was encouraged to explore painting and learned some of the basic techniques of painting in this program.

I attended a specialized high school where I could continue taking art classes while fulfilling the requirements of a college prep high school education. Being fascinated by mechanical objects, I took both automotive technology as well as art. I think I was the only student combining these courses of study.

My art education was put on hiatus as I was sent to a technical college to study engineering. To compensate, I learned photography and amused myself with photo trips to rural areas and abandoned industrial and mining sites. I would eventually turn many of these photos into oil paintings.

Following college, I moved to Southern California where I worked in a technical field by day and painted at night. I learned to work from photographs and I trained myself to sleep in 4 hour shifts, giving me several uninterrupted hours of studio work each night. To this day, I still sleep in 4 hour segments and do a lot of work in the middle of the night.

While in S. California, I produced several commissioned works, sold several paintings and had my work prominently displayed at local popular public facilities such as bars and restaurants in the Pasadena area. These paintings were mainly of urban landscapes. Commissioned works included a unique painting of the Parthenon, viewed from the inside looking out, several seascapes and a night seascape.

The paintings I did during the 1970’s, including all my works from my S. California period were signed “Vashon”. I had at that time concluded my given name was far too common. I would return to using my real name on my paintings in the early 1980’s.

After over 4 years of living in S. California, I returned to Michigan. Once again, working days in a technical field I soon changed jobs to one where I worked evenings. This allowed me to do what I really wanted, which was to enroll in an art college.

In 1984 I started taking classes at the University of Michigan School of Fine Arts and Design in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I would continue with my classes at U of M for 2 years. In a heart to heart conversation with one of art professors, he lamented that art school was capable of teaching people to paint, it could not teach people to be artists. He had concluded that the school had taught me all it could. He feared that if I continued, I would loose a unique style (that I did not know I had) and become yet another contemporary artist of the current genre. This was my first exposure to the concepts of consensus thinking, current fad and fashion and thinking inside and outside the box!

Following my years at U of M I went through a prolific period of work. Having gained a confidence about my work, I took on several commissions and produced many unique paintings as I explored subject matter and color. This period from the mid eighties to 1990 resulted in works that I felt had breakthrough qualities like “Used Cars” and “The Grain Silo”. “Used Cars” was painted from a photo that I had taken of a junk yard scene while at technical college. “Used Cars” would be accepted for exhibition at the Batavia Juried Art Exhibition in 1988.

During the early 1990’s, a series of personal issues as well and job difficulties arose, distracting me from my artwork. I fell back to my photographic work, capturing images of urban Americana. I became fascinated with the abandoned industrial and commercial buildings around the Detroit area.

Over the next decade I became extremely focused on my day job which seemingly became more challenging by the day. This was exhausting. My art work reduced to sketches and layouts of future paintings. This would continue for a decade until a contemporary co-worker of mine, who had fallen into the same trap as I saw a lithograph of my “Used Cars” in my office. It was upon his urging that I returned to my art work.

Rusty at first, I worked on studio paintings simply to regain my skills. It was slow at first, but after several months of working a few hours a day, it came back. These works were never planned for display and were destroyed after completion.
Reinvigorated and excited to be back painting, I started a series of paintings using some of my old photos of abandoned industrial buildings, as well as obtaining images from other artist/photographers that had great photos of some of these buildings. I started communicating with Lowell Boileau, a fellow artist, photographer and creator of the award winning website’ “The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit”. This resulted in my first two completed paintings in over a decade, “Corner Detail” and “Inside the Packard Plant”. Both scenes were derived from his photos of the massive but long abandoned Packard Motor Car Company Plant in Detroit. This incredible property of nearly 50 buildings on 38 acres of urban property is immense.

That same year, I met a photographer from Traverse City who would share with me some of his automotive photos of long abandoned and derelict cars. In the photos was a simple scene of one of his collector cars sitting outside, buried under a blanket of snow. It snows a lot in Traverse City! This would result in the painting, “’62 Volvo”. This would also start my search for great photos of old cars and to restart my “Used Cars” series of paintings.

With just 3 paintings completed, my former co-worker contacted me and announced he had left his job and was opening a new art gallery. He invited me to display the Packard Plant paintings and “62 Volvo”. Together, we planned a one-man gallery show of what would be a series of 12 paintings called “The Ruins of Detroit”. Sadly, financial issues forced him to bring in a financial partner that wholesaled decorative art and his new partner required him to display only art work sourced through his new partner. The show was off. The paintings were placed on a corporate loan program and currently are on display in the boardroom of a major local architectural firm.

Continuing on, I completed “Hotel Sign, Route 6” and I painted two more “Used Cars” paintings, “46 Dodge Truck” and “60 Ford Fairlane”.

Following “60 Ford Fairlane”, I tackled my nemesis, “Curb Service”. A large exhibition quality work that I originally laid-out in 1994, but never finished. This work was from a photo I took of an old drive-in in Ypsilanti, Michigan back in 1989. The urge to move to more contemporary work was building in me, but I knew I could not make the transition until I had completed this painting. It took several months of work, but in the late winter of 2008, “Curb Service” was completed. It is my tribute to Edward Hopper, who inspired me at an early age. It is the same size as “Nighthawks” and depicts an image of a late-night spot to grab a bite to eat. Like “Nighthawks”, it has a dream-like feel to it, a brightly lit image floating in a sea of darkness.