I grew up in a very small town in a pretty isolated and remote area--northwestern Nebraska.  I had the normal tendency as an adolescent towards separation and individuation, and had an interest in science, so I majored in Biology at the largest and farthest away school I thought my parents could afford--the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, 400 miles east of my hometown of Rushville. Being a fairly driven but naive young man I felt drawn towards medicine and managed to get admitted to the University of Nebraska College of Medicine in Omaha, where I met my wonderful wife Kathy and married her. Together we set off for three grueling years of residency at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, she in pediatrics and I in internal medicine.  Surviving that, we moved back to Nebraska, hung out our shingles as primary care physicians, and started a family. 

It turns out that everyone who told us primary care was a difficult path was right.  I tried to find a balance in different practice settings but gradually came to believe that the American healthcare system was so broken that I would never find happiness trying to work in it.  After a lot of soul searching I left primary care after 17 difficult but often rewarding years, and took a job doing pharmaceutical research. Eleven years later, I believe I have found a career that allows me to have the life I want, in that I have an interesting and stimulating job that does not own me.  I have time to sleep, exercise, read, cook dinner with my wife and most days do a little art in one way or another.  I am one of those people who always liked art but felt that I had no talent.  In the summer of 2000, I happened to take a one afternoon drawing class during a family vacation at the YMCA of the Rockies in Estes Park, and a spark was ignited.   I had a fairly successful drawing with a minimum of coaching, and found it very exciting.  I took another drawing class when I got home, which focused on the classic "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain", and I was hooked. I started keeping a sketchbook, dabbling with watercolors, and slowly and with great trepidation showing my work to others. It has been said that the only way to make great art is to make a lot of bad art, and I have made a lot of bad art. I still make bad art sometimes, but sometimes not so bad.  I try hard to enjoy the process more than the product, and have succeeded in that to some extent. Art to me is the lens that brings the world into better focus.