I am a native Houstonian and life-long Galveston visitor who calls the island home many weeks and weekends of the year. By education I am an engineer and MBA and have spent most of my career in technically oriented information technology, biotech, and FinTech companies. I gravitated to watercolor painting about 12 years ago as a way of exercising the other side of my brain.

I was fascinated with the technical nature of watercolor and the challenge of representing three dimensional objects and scenes in a two-dimensional form. I wanted to see if I could convey the curves of a flower or the depth of a landscape in a way that people imagined they were there. For the first eight or nine years I painted subjects, like flowers, in a studio or from photographs I captured in my travels.

The foundation of any painting is the drawing and about five years ago I decided to take up sketching as a way to practice “seeing” – to better understand the relationships between objects, how perspective adds depth, and take in the context of my subject. At the start of my journey, I was introduced to Urban Sketching, a worldwide community of artists dedicated to the practice of on-location drawing. After a workshop in Costa Rica, I was hooked.

Over the last five years, I’ve explored the Houston area with the Houston chapter of Urban Sketchers, taken my sketch book on business trips, and painted on the streets of Europe and Caribbean islands. I’ve found that, not only has my ability to see developed but I become much more aware of and attached to the subjects I document on my travels. Much more so than a quick photo would have ever provided. A bonus has been the people I’ve met along the way. Certainly, my fellow sketchers but, nothing invites a conversation like someone with a pencil, pen, or paint brush capturing a scene in someone’s hometown or experienced by a fellow traveler.

From street scenes to historic buildings, the paintings in this exhibit are some of the spots that have captured my eye in Galveston. Each one depicts a few hours of a day in a place I hope you’ll recognize. With more time and wall space, I know there are many more favorite scenes to capture. I normally work in an A4 sketchbook. For this series, I worked on watercolor paper trimmed to the same size as my favorite sketchbook.