Born in 1920 at Mesa, Arizona. Before becoming an artist in 1947, he worked as a sign painter, cartoonist, commercial artist, illustrator, designer and publicity manager in New York and California. From 1942 to 1945 he served in the Air Force and painted murals for the army. In 1949-50 he studied at the San José State University and from 1950 to 1953 at the California State University, Sacramento. In 1951 he had his first one-man exhibition at the Crocker Art Gallery, Sacramento, California. From 1954 to 1957 he produced eleven educational films, for which he won the Scholastic Art Prize in 1961. From 1951 to 1961 he taught at Sacramento City College, and from 1960 to 1976 at the University of California, Davis. He has had many exhibitions in the USA, including one at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1981. In 1972 he was in the documenta "5", Kassel. Using oleaginous pigment and the over-emphatic colors and well-defined shadows of advertisements, he paints everyday imagery - usually sweet and creamy cakes and pastries - whose sensuous attraction is reduced to absurdity by the conceptual and illusionistic structures of his painting.