About Me

BORN 1945 Ironwood Michigan—Married 1966 to Mary—Two daughters Elizabeth & Katie—Four granddaughters  Liliana, Hannah, Violet, and Clara

In my early years I worked mostly in pen and ink, and watercolor or prisma color.  I  was  illustrating for publishers and ad agencies in the LA area.  In the late 1970’s we moved to Oregon with the ‘great migration’ and worked  out of Portland.

In the very late 1980’s I began to play around with paper using samples I had gathered through the years.  The first things I made out of paper were some fairly crude paper buildings that made up a little village for our mantle one Christmas; shortly followed by some snowmen.  They weren’t much, but I was hooked.  I did have one of my later ornaments hung on the White House Christmas tree.

It was in the early 1990’s that I started using the different colors of paper to sort of ‘paint’ with the paper and frame them as I do now.  Most pieces are made up of hundreds to thousands of intricately hand cut bits of paper some smaller than 1/64th of an inch in size.  Because of  some of the minute detail in my pieces, I was encouraged to enter miniature art shows around the world and have won many national and international awards for my work.  If you ever get a chance to see a miniature art show in person, please do.  You won’t be sorry.

The tools I use are fairly simple:  Exacto Knife,  Toothpick,  Rulers,  Elmer’s glue,  and various Hole Punches.  Some people assume I must use some sort of magnification when I work. I don’t, but I do wear reading glasses now, and have lots of good light.  I usually have a couple magnifying glasses hanging in our booth.  Feel free to use one to get a close up view

Working with paper is the most fun I’ve had making art.  It is the one type of art I feel the most creative and competent in making.  I really feel like I was made to do it, and always look forward to starting on the next one.

Most of my pieces seem to have a story to them, I guess that’s the result of working as an illustrator all these years.  I enjoy it when my work brings a smile to someone’s face.  I hope you enjoy looking at them as much as I enjoy making them.

Thanks for visiting my site,

Doug