Chuck earned a B.F.A. in painting at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign in 1979, and an M.F.A. in painting and drawing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1983. He taught foundation drawing, design and art appreciation as a teaching assistant while attending graduate school. Teaching aspiring artists, and learning more deeply through teaching became his profession and life-long passion.
Since then, he has taught drawing at various colleges and universities including Murray State University, Cleveland State University, Henry Ford Community College and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Chuck retired in 2024 as a full professor from Iowa State University after teaching there for 25 years. He coordinated the foundation drawing curriculum for the College of Design and taught advanced courses in narrative drawing and character design in the Department of Art and Visual Culture. He was also involved in the early development of an Illustration major at ISU which will be offered there beginning in the fall of 2026.
Chuck's artwork has been exhibited in over 150 regional, national and international juried exhibitions that include shows at the San Diego Art Institute, the Mazza Museum, Rutgers University, Vanderbilt University, Clemson University and the Butler Institute of American Art. He has published five illustrated picture books for children, four of which he also authored. He continues to work in various forms of sequential narrative art.
Chuck now practices as a full-time artist and grandparent and lives happily with his family in Iowa.
Artist Statement
Drawing has always been my primary means of expression. When I paint, I feel as though I'm drawing. From the beginning, my images have been narrative in nature, and this instinct for storytelling eventually led me to write and illustrate picture books for children. Whether working on a single, stand-alone image or developing a sequence of drawings, I think in terms of story—how an image unfolds, how a moment suggests what came before and what might follow.
My work moves in several distinct but interconnected directions. Humor and irony underlie some of my ideas. All of it is informed by observational drawing and extensive visual research that is tweaked and distorted by my imagination. This includes figurative pictures that lean toward traditional realism, often heightened through dramatic light, saturated color, or charged expression. Self-portraiture has been a recurring subject, most recently growing into a collection of small, grotesque pen-and-ink portrayals inspired by pop culture, current events, and art history. Another series was inspired by specific art historical examples and use metaphor, narrative, and autobiography to reinterpret familiar visual language. Still another direction led to a collection of flamboyant, surreal scarecrows—strange guardians designed to confront and control human flaws and compulsions.
I have illustrated and published five picture books for children, four of which I authored. My stories have frequently been triggered by life experiences and associations I've made to past influences. They often begin as ordinary circumstances in recognizable settings that evolve and unravel into absurd chaos. My story ideas sometimes originate through characters, but are more often inspired by distinctive settings that I imagine and design as characters. I am always excited by new, unusual things to draw and my self-indulgence in this respect has influenced some story ideas.
My imagination is ignited when I'm making art. I'm driven by the physicality of drawing - pulling a pigmented tool across paper and trying to control how it marks up that surface. I am preoccupied with the magic of creating the illusions of light, volume, texture, and space on a flat surface, whether working in color or in neutral tones. I get pulled into a drawing as I define smaller and smaller forms, textures and spaces. A magnifying light sometimes helps me "get into" the drawing and stay fully focused on each moment as I continuously course-correct my meandering drawings toward a final, polished resolution. I sometimes draw digitally and frequently integrate digital and traditional tools, particularly when adjusting character proportions and resolving compositions, but my practice is primarily grounded in traditional drawing and painting media. With these, I pursue craftsmanship in creating original art by hand.