My interest in drawing and painting began at age three with a paint-by-numbers set of a rocket ship. As a schoolboy, much to my teachers’ chagrin, I continually filled the margins of my notebooks with airplanes engaging in fantastic dogfights. I developed an interest in birds along the barrel of my BB gun, but soon took up binoculars instead. I began painting birds around age ten and after a birding trip into Mexico at age fourteen, I became an enthusiastic painter of birds of the New World Tropics.

I pursued an artistic curriculum throughout my schooling and received a Bachelor of Science degree in commercial art from Southwest Texas State University in 1972. While still in my junior year, I began work on the forty-eight color plates for L.Irby Davis’s A Field Guide to the Birds Of Mexico and Central America , a book illustrating for the first time in color, many tropical species not found in the United States. Since college I have been one of a handful of artists who specialize in birds of the American Tropics. These tropical forests are home to some of the most beautiful and interesting birds, mammals, and plants on Earth, many of which are disappearing at an alarming rate. I have traveled extensively in Mexico, Central and South America in research for my paintings of these birds and their forests. I have placed my paintings in many collections, including the famous King Ranch, but it is most gratifying that many of the world’s leading tropical ornithologists have my work in their collections. The paintings are valued not only for their accurate portrayals of neotropical birds but also for the detailed plant life that often fills their backgrounds.

Selected Exhibitions

American Ornithologists Union meeting at Texas A&M University Invitational Exhibit of Bird Art 1979

Cleveland Museum of Natural History Exhibition 1980

Cincinnati Museum of Natural History Juried Exhibit “Nature Interpreted” and tour 1983-1985

Houston Museum of Science Featured Exhibitor, “Birds in Art” Exhibition 1984

World’s Fair in Louisiana Two Exhibits sponsored by the State of Louisiana

Gladys Porter Zoo Poster Artist and Featured Exhibitor

Endangered Species Media Project Exhibition and Tour 1990-1991

Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, Wausau Wisconsin Juried Exhibit “Birds in Art” 1980, 1983, 1995

Group exhibition at the King Ranch Museum with Roger Tory Peterson and Kent Ullberg 1996

One man show University of Texas Pan American 1997

One man show Rio Grande Museum Harlingen 1999

Selected Publications

- L.Irby Davis: A Field Guide to the Birds of Mexico and Central America forty-eight color plates and cover painting 1972

- Journal of the American Falconer’s Association 1976

- S.Dillon Rilpey: Revision of Handbook of the Birds of India and Pakistan four plates 1979

Ornithological Journal The Wilson Bulletin Color frontispieces illustrating lead articles 1983,1984

Winner of Design contest for Kentucky Trout Stamp, First Issue of State stamp design and limited edition print 1984

DeSante and Pyle Distributional Checklist of North American Birds twenty-five black and white illustrations and cover design 1986

New bird guide All the Birds of North America illustrations of the Hummingbird family 1997