"Prior to my career as a painter and artist, I worked as a health services professional in the Los Angeles area. My work as a respiratory therapist, hyperbaric and burn therapist, and CPR instructor for the American Red Cross was highly rewarding, but my desire to explore the possibility of creating positive environments led me to retire from health care and to explore opportunities as a painter and artist.

I began painting in 1978, but I didn't start working seriously as a muralist until 1980. Since then, I have worked full-time as a free-lance artist and decorative painter. During the early '80s, I worked for several graphic-design companies designing and painting logos, graphics and supergraphics, decorative borders, color-bands, and stenciling.

Within a few years, I was working with a design and development company, traveling the western states (Colorado, Arizona, Nebraska, Nevada, California), designing and painting restaurants and pubs. This allowed me to work with and learn from a wide variety of local and international artists, doing carnival- and circus-type illustrations, fancy lettering, poster and billboard illustration and painting, and restoration of props, antiques, and objets d'art. I learned gilding and gold-leaf, and painted faux finishes (including marbleizing, wood-graining, and fantasy finishes, glazing, staining, and antiquing). Working 'on the road' also offered many opportunities to develop my landscape painting and portraiture.

In 1983, I began working on large-scale fine-art mural projects for private estates. During this time, I began exploring classic oil-painting techniques.

Since then I have continued to free-lance as an environmental artist, muralist, and decorative painter. I have worked with commercial studios, painting large-scale movie posters, album covers, and billboards for outdoor display; and with scenic studios, doing set painting, backdrops, sky-drops, and dioramas. I also began accepting private commissions for mural projects for hotels, casinos, nightclubs, restaurants, and churches, ranging from small, single-wall projects to complete estates.

Throughout the past twenty years of my professional painting career, I have also continued to develop and refine my body of work as a fine artist." -RQ