About

Thirty-plus years in communications. Twenty-plus years in technology. BSc AgSystems Mngmnt, Purdue University. Outdoor communicator. Lifelong outdoorsman, designer, marketer, entrepreneur, heritagekeeper. Active Member “OWAA (Outdoor Writers Association of America).

This collection of images is OOAK Digital Gallery.  OOAK was originally conceived in 1978 as an outlet for my pen&ink, watercolor, photography and wood carving projects.  In 1984 I officially ‘opened’ OOAK as a studio and began offering my repertoire of work for sale only as extremely limited, hand-made editions. I did not know – nor realize – then, but I had just stepped onto the path that would lead me to develop the eLITHOGRAPHIC© process.

“No one is crueler to us than we are to ourselves.” _Me_

I am a *Graphic Designer*, not a Fine Artist.  I make that distinction at the outset whenever discussing the work I do.  The eLITHOGRAPH© will appear to ‘look like fine art’. It is designed to do just that.

The eLITHOGRAPHIC© process is… *the result of ‘a designed technical creative process’ – not the result of a ‘fine art media interactive process’*.

Thus, through the eLITHOGRAPHIC© process, I produce imagery that will ‘appear’ as works of various ‘Fine Art Media’, when in fact they are ‘creatively designed’ to appear so.  Please do not replace ‘creatively designed’ with ‘engineered’ for my work is not engineered.  There is no template beyond the software parameters, which I use – and even they are subject to my own technical creativity.  Each image is ‘created’ to become what I visualize them to become.  I just use tools that are – as yet – not recognized as ‘fine art media tools’.

One day eLITHOGRAPHIC© may be held in the same regard as fine art, but it will need to grow to that point.  No doubt the process will follow along similar lines of the infamous – and still on-going in some circles – art feud… photography vs. fine art.  Let’s hope, that as we all move along this path, we can equally bask in the rare, tranquil and healing light radiating from the power of the creative process.

I’m fine with this mission.

Here’s why.

Let’s begin with the burning question most asked.

Why do an eLITHOGRAPH©?  Why not just do a watercolor, oil, pastel, pen & ink, gouche, etc., directly.

The answer is simple:  _I get bored too easily with the ‘process’ of the traditional media._ Not the media itself, but the process.  To the creative process, boredom is as sure a killer as the kiss of an asp.  Stall too long and the whole ‘moment’ – maybe the whole year! – goes up in a destructive plume of emotional canker.

I greatly admire those who are no so cursed, but blessed with the ability to move with the process, gaining strength and creative power with each application of their media tool, no matter how long it might take.  I am not one who can do this.

But I live to create and images are a large part of that creative flow.

I sought photography as my cure.  It did provide me with the ability to rapidly create, but I wanted more. I sought resolution in the darkroom.  Again there was a finite level of reach.  But like other creatives who sought photography as their solution, it ended up with the chemical solutions driving us away.  Allergy is limiting.

Technology showed promise.  I plowed the raw field of the early ’70s -finding only placer traces of potential.  But I knew, from even those bits and pieces that I’d found the most likely solution to my dilemma.  Oh, had I only known that I would meet up with an even greater wall than art media!  I’d have run screaming into a creative oblivion.  Thankfully I was not allowed clear vision in what I was about to see.

Thank God for certain ‘visual impairments’.