Studio

Paintings,
and a wall or two.

Why this page is on a product profile → the way you learn to see in a studio is the same way you learn to see a system. Composition, restraint, what to leave out. It carries.

I studied studio art at Colby. I don't pick up a brush as often as I used to, but the practice still shows up in the way I think about composition, restraint, and which thing in a frame gets to be loud — and it follows me into product work whether I'm asking it to or not. The palette of this whole site comes from these.

Murals · the aspen series

An aspen grove, painted up a stairwell.

A two-story stairwell wall in our current home painted floor-to-ceiling as an aspen grove — cream-white trunks marked with dark bark scoring rising out of the existing cool-gray wall, with a small square window high near the top.
Aspen stairwell · full wall Acrylic + wall paint · ~15 ft floor to ceiling

The third — and largest — mural in the series, and the one that lives in our current home. A two-story stairwell, wall to ceiling, turned into a stand of Colorado aspens. Acrylic on top of wall paint. Brush only, no projector, no template.

The wall is the background. The cool gray plaster is the negative space — the air between trees — and stays untouched. Every white trunk is painted on top of it, then every dark bark mark goes on top of the white. The composition had to be decided before a single brush touched the wall: pencil layout, masking, step back, repeat.

Two stories of scaffolding, one stubbornly small window I had to paint around, and the kind of arm-fatigue you only really earn from painting over your head all weekend. Worth it.

  • SubjectColorado aspen — inspired by where I live
  • MediumAcrylic + interior wall paint
  • Scale~15 ft tall · two-story stairwell
  • LocationOur current home · Arvada, CO
  • OrderThird in the series
A close-up of the aspen stairwell mural — the cool gray of the existing wall reads as the air between trees, while the white trunks and the fine dark bark scoring are all painted on top.
Detail · the bark The wall is the background · every trunk and mark is paint
Murals · one & two

Two daughters,
two bedrooms,
one theme.

The first two were my daughters' bedrooms in our last house — same aspen idea, worked out two different ways. The stairwell forest was the third pass at the theme, and by then the technique had figured itself out.

A daughter's bedroom wall painted wall-to-wall with vertical aspen trunks — cream-white trunks marked with dark bark scoring set against a soft sage-blue painted wall.
Mural one · aspen trunks Daughter's bedroom · sage-blue ground
A second daughter's bedroom mural — white aspen trunks with thin branches arcing across a dusty blue wall, hung with hand-painted yellow and orange autumn aspen leaves.
Mural two · aspen in autumn Branches and leaves · second daughter's room

Three rooms, one tree. The Colorado aspen keeps finding its way back onto every wall I own.

Oil paintings

From the studio years.

Two landscapes painted recently. A fabric series from over a decade ago: three drape studies that grew into each other, and an early mixed-media piece that started the obsession with color, texture, and fabric.

Landscapes
Oil painting of stratified agricultural fields at sunset — horizontal bands of tilled earth in gray and rust-brown, green crop rows, and a wide sky with billowing purple-gray clouds lit from below by a warm orange horizon.
Striped fields Oil on panel · Colorado landscape
Oil painting of a wooden boardwalk winding through a New England salt marsh — tall golden-yellow and ochre grasses in the foreground, deep red and rust-colored low brush, a glint of tidal water in the middle distance, and a soft sage sky above.
Salt marsh, boardwalk Oil on panel · New England landscape
Fabric series
An oil study of draped fabric in deep blue, slate, and violet — abstract folds and shadows creating almost architectural forms against a neutral ground.
Drape study · blue & violet Oil on panel
An oil study of folded fabric in muted teal, sage, and dusty lavender — sharp geometric folds in the upper half, a soft purple swag pooling in the foreground.
Drape study · green & teal Oil on panel
An oil study of folded fabric in deep crimson, rose, pink, and slate blue — heavy curling folds reading almost like a still life of stone.
Drape study · red & rose Oil on panel
A mixed-media piece of layered rectangles of dyed and painted canvas in deep reds, rust, sage greens, and blues — raw frayed edges, faint scrolling spirals, coarse woven panels and smooth painted cloth.
Patchwork · the spark Mixed media · where color, texture, and fabric became the subject
A note

A painting is a thousand decisions about what to leave out.

These pieces are mostly from the years I was still painting regularly. The medium is far less present in my life now — the days fill with other things — but the way you learn to see in a studio doesn't really go away. You learn to look hard at what's actually there before you decide what to do about it. You learn that the loud thing in the frame is loud because everything around it agreed to be quiet. You learn that "more" is almost never the answer.

That stays with me when I'm prioritizing a roadmap, or sitting in a problem-definition meeting trying to figure out whether we're solving the right thing. So while I don't lead with the painting anymore, I'd be a different kind of PM without it.