Biographical Statement
Virgil was born in Texas and started sketching and painting as a young boy. He has worked in four diverse career fields, including as a Special Forces officer with combat duty in the northern mountains of South Vietnam; as a practicing architect; tenured architectural professor and Head of the School of Architecture, Oklahoma State University; and finally, as a senior executive at a world-wide professional association and as the chief executive officer of two global non-profit professional societies.
Throughout his career, Virgil has painted regularly on a part-time basis. With retirement in July 2008, Virgil has rededicated himself to fine art painting, as a full time painter, photographing, sketching and painting on a daily basis. In addition to his personal painting, Virgil is also a teacher, demonstrator, workshop leader, author and Internet commentator.
To advance his knowledge and painting skill, he has painted in workshops with a number of respected contemporary U.S., Canadian and Australian watercolor artists. He has painted independently in the U.S., U.K., France, Italy, and Spain. His global travels, in Europe, the Middle East, Central/South America, and the Asia-Pacific, are reflected in his love of landscape and architecture/urban paintings featuring subjects from around the world.
Virgil has undergraduate and graduate degrees in architecture.
Approach to Painting
Virgil paints primarily in watercolor, painting a variety of subjects. He enjoys most painting landscape and town/urban scapes. He is concerned with telling stories in paint which share a personal and expressive idea, feeling or emotion about each subject. Color and light figure strongly in all his work. Virgil’s global travels and his love of historical places influence his choice of subjects, ranging from urban locations such as New York, Rome and Paris to small townships and scenic rural areas in the U.S., as well as rural settings in England, France and Italy.
Virgil spends hours each week seeking out, photographing, sketching and studying landscapes and small townships and buildings which may often be taken for granted, if consciously considered at all.
Virgil uses these, and other readily familiar subjects, interpreting them, often reinventing them using color and an artist's expression as major tools. The results are paintings with strong, colorful shapes and scenes that offer new opportunities to consider and appreciate the value that his subjects contribute to the richness of life.
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