Back to Billboards

After a degree in Commercial Art and Advertising, my first job was designing billboards. I walked into the paint shop and met George Frost actually painting a bulletin and was awestruck by the size. Eventually I tried my hand at painting the billboards and worked for over 10 years in that field. I made a good living and since I specialized in pictorials, considered it good practice the paintings I loved to do.

While I worked mostly in Texas, I kept hearing about a billboard artist that did the giant Marlboro billboards. Marlboro did a nationwide search for the best pictorial artist and Marv Gunderson won. He resided in san Diego, CA and painted pictures in oil colors of horses, cowboys and mountain scenes on huge 30' x 90' bulletins, which were shipped around the country to football stadiums in Dallas, Los Angeles, Pheonix, Atlanta and one giant 42' x 90' at the Chicago O'Hare Airport. Marv was a graduate of The Chicago Art Institute. After constantly being drawn to and hearing about Marv... I went to see him. Karen and I sold our home in Texas and moved with Bini Lin (our daughter) and 'Kat' the dog, to San Diego. I worked side by side with Marv and learned a lot about painting... form, texture, edges, brushmanship,color and on and on.

Billboards still influence my work and can best be seen in 'Curly' which is painted on ½" MDO(signboard) complete with banana 'cut-out' or 'extension' that were frequently used on the bulletins.