The endless variety of Collage combinations and Photo Montage offer shocking and surprising possibilities. In my case collage represents a form of "Instant Surrealism". My montage compositions are wide open for personal interpretation (or misinterpretation...). The meaning will be different for everyone who looks at them. Like they say, meaning is in the eye of the beholder. I cull and isolate the everyday images of the 20th century to redefine the image-heavy age we live in.

My mother was an artist, so, having grown up in the 1950s, my first visual impressions came from a house filled with Art Books and the images of classical images created by the old masters. Rather than television, my youth was spent studying the works of Leonardo, Botticelli, & etc. (If an artist hasn't been dead for a couple hundred years then I probably never heard of them). Add that to a house filled with consumer magazines and the combination drew me straight to Collage as a medium.

Over the last 45 years I've lived off grid up in the hills of Northern California. For the better part of the last half century I've only had kerosene lamps, no telephone, no modern appliances. A couple years ago my wife and I added Solar Panels (!) But it's very rustic where we live and work. My "Studio" is actually just a tent. (A 20 ft Yurt). So I'd use some of the prize money to build a solid structure that would afford me room to create my works. And--- the rest to local Charities.