I can remember being in my grandfather’s, Fred F. Willson’s architect studio when I was very young and being entranced watching him draw elaborate designs filled with hand lettering. From then on I was always drawing and painting.
I was accepted to graduate school in Seattle but went in a completely different direction to build a cabin in Galllatin Canyon on the land where my grandfather’s cabin had stood. I started Woodcraft Signs and shared a space with a woodworker and iron worker in an old barn just off Main Street that was one of Bozeman’s early blacksmith’s shop.
I’ve had a variety of projects as a designer and did all the sign work for the movie the River Runs Through It. I’ve been fortunate to have participated in mural projects around the U.S, Canada and Scotland but it’s always a highlight when I can do work for the buildings that my Grandfather designed.
I’ve loved doing the sign work for the Emerson and to have designed their metal yard sign. It was also a real honor for me to paint a large mural for the Community Room in his Gallatin County Court House building.
I’ve now come full circle by embracing the original source of my lifelong inspiration and concentrating on a series of paintings of Fred F. Willson’s early architecture.