About the Artist

Drawing has always been part of my life. Since childhood, it helped me to escape my early years of poverty and hardship. Thus, at the age of fourteen, I had to work after school hours to survive. Though I was an excellent student, after graduating high school, I went to work to pay my way in life.

As I look back, I realized that my method of learning was the same approach that the Old Master artists utilized... namely Apprenticeship! I went to work for a commercial sign company, and I became an apprentice. After two years as an apprentice, my ability for Illustration was recognized, and the owner instructed me to paint all the pictures for signs and posters, and any other work that required art work.

In 1956, I was fortunate to receive private instruction for five years by Adam Sherriff Scott, R.C.A.(Royal Canadian Academy)... Advanced Illustration, Composition and the proper Utilisation of Colour.

In 1961, an advertising agency whose specialty was preparing campaigns for the foremost Construction and Real Estate Developers in the Montreal and surrounding area, offered me a commission to paint all the illustrations on the outdoor signs and billboards for their clients. I opened my own commercial studio. My work was well received and appreciated, and my career in commercial graphics was a success.

My health was always an issue, and finally in 1980, I was diagnosed having Crohn’s disease. My suffering ended with surgery in March 2004. Then and there, I decided to devote the rest of my life to creating Fine Art paintings.

During the interim... in 1983, I joined an Atelier Libre (an artists' workshop), namely l’Académie de Beaux Arts de Notre Dame de Grace. For eighteen years, I drew the Live Model, two evenings every week.

If you study my work, you will see the influence of the artists I adore... Ivan Shishkin (landscape), Alphonse Mucha (elegant ladies), Dominique Ingres (portraiture), and Joseph Leyendecker (gorgeous illustration). But most of all, Anna Noeh, whose art is my inspiration.