My studio circa 2006.

The Young Apprentice

The 1980s were an exciting time if you were a fan of Carl Barks. While Barks lost his license to paint the Disney Ducks in 1976, he got it back again in 1981, and then some. Another Rainbow, founded by Bruce Hamilton, a huge Barks fan, would go on to publish a dozen Barks paintings as lithographs, a high-end art book collecting Barks's Disney paintings from the 1970s, and a complete library of Barks's Disney comic stories in deluxe, slipcased, hardbound editions.

For me, the 80s were an exciting time because Barks retired to Southern Oregon, to within a half hour of where I lived. I had corresponded with him a couple of times and had sent him my first original duck painting -- a portrait of Barks in Scrooge's money bin. That earned me an invitation to his home and I spent the next decade showing him my work, learning his technique, and seeing his large lithograph paintings first hand. With Barks's help and encouragement, my craft as a painter grew exponentially in just a decade. My days of simply copying Barks's paintings were over: I was finally ready to tackle original compositions of my own.