I was born in 1952 in a naval hospital on the Marine Corp Air Station at Cherry Point, North Carolina. As a Marine Corp dependent, my childhood was divided up into three-year segments. In addition to the few weeks I lived in Cherry Point before my father was transferred, I have lived in Memphis TN, Albuquerque, NM, Yuma, AZ, and various places in California. I went to high school and a few years of college in southern California and graduated from Humboldt State University in northern California in 1976. My bachelor's degree is in fine arts where I focused on painting in oil and illustration with pen and ink. I moved to Seattle six months after graduation and have lived in this area ever since.
I made my living in technical publications. Over the course of my career I have done technical illustration, photography, technical writing, and desktop publishing. All the while I continued to paint in oils, created dry pigment pastel drawings, and designed and fabricated stained glass windows. In the late 1990s I created an online comic titled Comics Outta Left Field. This was a reflex reaction due to my favorite cartoonist Gary Larson retiring from drawing "The Far Side". I never had aspirations of equaling the humor Larson created with his strip, but it was fun trying for awhile. I retired from gainful employment in 2018 and have since focused entirely on my primary love of oil painting.
Artist's Statement
I graduated from Humboldt State University in northern California in 1976. My bachelor's degree is in fine arts where I focused on painting in oil and illustration with pen and ink. As a college student, my paintings leaned toward the abstract but today I like to paint what I see. I love the beautiful scenery experienced from traveling. The subject matter of my paintings are representational of places I've been and things I've seen. Landscapes, seascapes, and cityscapes are my primary focus with people occasionally interspersed throughout. I paint in an impressionistic style as I like the expressiveness of a loose brush stroke and how it brings out the richness of the oil paint. It also allows for spontaneity when I'm applying paint to canvas.
Check out Mitch's current work on display at Fogue Studios
Visit Mitch's website