I didn't intend to become a paint developer. Having just graduated from a fine art program at a local college here in beautiful Kingston, Ontario, I began a career painting portraits in oil. While I liked painting people I didn't like commissioned work. During this time I became interested in studying the painting techniques of the old masters, their use of colour and their methods of translucent layering. I attempted to learn these methods and to integrate them into my portraits. I sought out colours that were suited to these techniques but only those which were permanent. I discovered that there were many interesting new colour pigments which would have been well suited to use in artist paints due to a high resistance to fading. Unfortunately most of these colours were not available in any current line of artist oil colours.

I set about acquiring samples of these pigments and experimented with grinding them into linseed oil. I used these paints I made in my portraits and after a period of a few months was painting exclusively with my own colours.

My need for other supplies led me to frequent a local art supply store called "Art Noise." It was run by Steve Ginsberg, someone I knew from public school. I talked about what I was doing and he seemed interested in seeing my paint. It compared favourably to the best lines of oil paint in his store.

At some point the conversation turned to talk of paint manufacturing. Steve asked me if I knew anything about making acrylic paint. I told him I knew a little bit but not much; that I knew it was a lot more complicated than making oil paint. He said that he sold a lot more acrylics than oil and thought that acrylics would be worth making. I said I would look into it and proceeded to research acrylic paint. After about four months I had several prototypes to show Steve. We decided to pursue this and I developed a line of thirty-nine colours for the store. In less than a year of successfully selling this paint we began to attract outside interest in the product. This provided the incentive we required to start a company for manufacturing artist paint.

Getting this new company up and going was a struggle. We both had to wear many hats but mainly Steve worked on sales and I continued to develop more new products, while always working on ways of improving existing ones. Tri-Art has grown a lot over the years. A big part of that growth has been because of our relationship with Woolfitt's. I will continue to work on developing new colours and mediums for existing lines and I'll be working on something altogether new as well. I get a lot of satisfaction out of creating a new product. I didn't set out to become a paint developer but I'm glad I did.