Studio Instructor

A Michigan native, he studied illustration and painting at the College for Creative Studies before spending time as a working freelance artist — taking on editorial illustration, mural commissions, and gallery shows throughout the Midwest. Teaching came naturally; he found that explaining technique to others sharpened his own understanding of it, and he hasn't looked back since.

He currently teaches across the Youth Studio and Adult Studio programs, and is known for his patient, detail-oriented approach. His students often describe his feedback as specific and honest — never vague encouragement, always something actionable. Outside the studio he continues to paint regularly, which he considers just as important as anything he teaches.

His background in illustration gives him an unusual range as a teacher. He's equally comfortable breaking down the fundamentals of line weight and perspective for a beginner as he is helping an experienced student push through a compositional problem in a painting. That versatility shows up most in the Adult Studio, where students arrive at very different levels and need different things from the same session.

He's particularly interested in helping students develop an eye — the ability to look at their own work critically and know what it needs next. In his view, that skill matters more than any individual technique, because it's what makes practice actually useful. Once a student can see clearly, everything else follows.