A painter with a wide variety of subject matter supported by extensive
travel in the United States and Europe. A special focus of his painting
and lecturing was the Blackfoot Indian tribe in the Canadian Rockies.
He began his art studies as a textile designer at the Lowell Institute
in Lowell, Massachusetts. He had summer jobs in Provincetown,
Massachusetts, which brought him in contact with numerous artists,
which, in turn, influenced him to become a fine art painter. He studied
in New York at the Artist Artisans and in Boston at the Cowles Art
School, and then went to Paris for three years, attending the Academies
Julien, Colarossi and Ecole des Beaux Arts. Among his teachers were
Jean-Paul Laurens and Benjamin Constant. Returning to New York City, he
spent the next seven years employed by Mc Clure's Magazine as art manager.
Subsequent
to that employment, he was vice-president of an advertising agency
representing the Canadian Pacific Railway and Steamship Lines, and in
this capacity traveled to the Orient and to the Pacific Northwest among
the Blackfeet Indians of Stoney Reserve, which from 1924 became a
primary focus of his art expression for the next 25 years. Ultimately
he was admitted as a "Blood Brother" and given the name of
O-Ha-Ze-Na-Na, which translates in English to Spotted Cloud.