Though I’ve been drawing and taking pictures since my early teens, I first began painting seriously in the late 1970′s. I learned watercolor techniques and methods from self instruction books and began to take workshops from professional painters in the 1980′s. I was introduced to oil painting by helpful colleagues in California in the late 1990′s through 2003.   I’ve learned the most about painting from Tad Spurgeon, a master of the craft, who lives not far from me here in Vermont.  The photographs were taken with a Panasonic DMC-FZ5 LUMIX digital camera. The digital paintings were done using CS Chem3D Pro Molecular Modeling and Analysis Software and Adobe Photoshop CS3.