ABout the Artist
Ed was born in Honolulu, HI, and was raised in San Francisco, CA. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with a degree in Art History. Afterwards, he spent years in Niger, West Africa teaching English for the US. Peace Corps and then 2 years in Dakar, Senegal, working as non-medical personnel for the U.S Public Health Service Measles Smallpox eradication program. After that experience he bought a VW Van and traveled through Europe for 6 months. Later a degree from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena (1981) convinced him that art could be both a passion and a metier. He moved to Seattle and began showing his paintings in galleries. In 1998 he entered the MFA program at the University of Idaho (MFA 1999). That's where he began painting birds on cigar boxes. He loves painting birds for their colors and attitudes (a Rufous Hummingbird can be very territorial) and the graphics of cigar boxes can frame the birds and relate to them (A Barn Owl painted on a White Owl cigar box) in a symbiotic way. He has lived in Tucson since 2012. He moved there for the sun and now adores the desert.