He had the opportunity to have very fine Art teachers in high school who also happened to be fine painters (George Benedict and Nick Todisco), and through their influence began to polish his painting style from an early age. After attending Onondaga Community College for architecture and realizing that the rigid structure of Architecture was not for him, he began elective courses in Fine Arts at Syracuse University. At Syracuse he began to study abstract painting and design with professors like Frank Goodnow and others to broaden the horizons of painting. It was here where he also began working with etching and lithograph printmaking. Never losing sight of traditional landscape painting, he then began to focus more on an Art career and began private study in portrait and figure painting with Austrian born portrait painter, Robert Hoffmann. Here he was able to hone in on the discipline of technique and begin to study portrait painting from a professional Artist, learning painting technique impossible to find in traditional schools. This association lasted for over eleven years. He then began to travel and paint extensively around the country and eventually traveled to Europe, focusing his attention on Italy. As time went on he continued study with other portrait painters such as Daniel Greene of New York and Jack Callahan of Rockport, building on the foundation he gained with Robert Hoffmann and feeling that the way to gain knowledge of landscape painting was through portrait painters, which he could then apply to landscape painting, enabling him to forge his own style.

Around 1980, he relocated to the North Shore of Massachusetts, where there has always been a thriving art scene. He achieved Master status at the Copley Society in Boston and began to receive many awards for his work, including The Yankee Sagendorf award and the Grumbacher medal. Paintings have been included in “The best of Oil Painting” and the “Best of Pastel” hard cover art books by Rockport Publishers and feature articles recently in “Sea History Magazine” and Southwest Florida's "Expressions" magazine. He continues to have sell out one man shows in both Nantucket Massachusetts and in Florida. More recently he signed a release as his paintings were selected to be included in the movie set of an upcoming major motion picture called "The Company Men" starring Kevin Costner, Ben Afflect and Tommy Lee Jones, filmed in Boston. In 2018 there was a book released in conjunction with the Gardner Colby Gallery of his Florida paintings titled, “A Painters Journey”. The book includes about 50 color plates with discussion by the artist of the times of day each group was painting depicts and how the paintings were approached in reference to the light.