Over the past three decades, I have turned a childhood love of drawing, touching and playing in the dirt into a successful career and business in Residential Landscape Design and Art. I hope that I can share some of that joy with others. As long as I am on the board, developing wonderful outdoor entertaining spaces for my clients, being commissioned to create drawings of America’s favorite athletes or architectural landmarks, I am happy either way…I get to do what I love…and I love what I do.
Professional Bio
Paul has an extensive body of work, having completed more than 1,200 landscape designs that reflect his clients’ goals and objectives while incorporating his love of art and creativity in landscape design. “I love people watching and designing for people. After all, I believe the occupation of Landscape Architecture is the study of people and how they interact in a variety of useable spaces. The way they sit, stand, play, relax, entertain–their overall posture and attitude toward life goals fascinates me. I am drawn to and passionate about absorbing my clients’ personality to develop hard and softscape designs that are functional and vibrant, with colors and textures that are full of life, movement and sustainability.Unlike many designers, Paul worked for a landscape company in Davidsonville, Maryland in his formative years digging holes and planting plants during the summers of high school and college, honing his skills of construction and plant horticulture. His landscape design process is a natural progression in his artistic maturity. He draws and designs with rich textural color and emotional strokes. His strong design sense of lines, forms, shapes and balance results in creative fresh concepts, making his design compositions unique and full of life.
Personal Bio
Paul was born in Nuremburg, Germany in 1965. When he was six years old his family moved to Odenton, Maryland. He played GORC youth sports and played travel team soccer. He was a three-year starter for Arundel and Meade varsity soccer teams.
Paul attended Anne Arundel Community College in 1984-85. In the fall of 1985 he transferred to West Virginia University where he received a Bachelor of Science Landscape Architecture (BSLA) degree in 1989, graduated 2nd in his class and was a member of the University’s varsity soccer team. In his sophomore year the university published 13 of his drawings and by the time he graduated he had 21 works of art published. Upon graduation he worked for an engineering firm. In 1991 he started his own landscape design and sports art company. He now lives, draws and designs in the lush, rolling countryside hills northwest of Baltimore, Maryland.
Choosing the Degree of Landscape Architecture
In 1982, I was a sophomore in high school most interested in drawing, girls and soccer. My cousin was several years older so when he asked me what kind of career I’d like to have when I grew up, “I don’t know” was a natural response. He knew I liked to draw and he knew I liked plants, so he suggested I get a degree in Landscape Architecture. I wasn’t totally blind to the professional world so I told him, “You can either be a landscaper or an architect. There is no such thing as a Landscape Architect.” He just smiled and made the bet. Needless to say, I lost the wager. But in doing so, I won a passion that would lead me to places and a life I could not have comprehended at the time.
A Few Words from Paul
“Without going too far back into my past, I’ll start by letting you in on a little-known fact about me. I was given the “gift” of dyslexia. Yes, I am dyslexic. (see who else is dyslexic http://www.dyslexia.com/famous.htm) When I look back on things, I realize the bet was rigged from the start. I didn’t know why when I read books I would sometimes get nauseous in grade school or why the words in the text books just didn’t click with me the way they did my classmates. Every time I would get to the end of a paragraph I did not know what I read. Having to read the same thing 3-4 times without understanding it became a short-lived experience. I just knew that I learned things differently. Absorbing information for me became a process of touching and doing practical work not reading and writing. Art, landscaping and architecture are visual, touch and feeling-based professions. I see three-dimensional pictures, shapes, spaces and locations of what others read.”
Paul completed his entire academic career – from elementary school through college – without being diagnosed for learning disabilities. It was at the age of 25 that he was diagnosed with three types of dyslexia.
Commissions
I have sold over 70,000 pieces of art, including commissions for the:
- Baltimore Orioles
- Baltimore Ravens
- Washington Redskins
- Washington Capitals
- Washington Wizards
- Lacrosse Hall of Fame in Baltimore
- Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.
- The Official Artist of the 1993 MLB All-Star Game
- Official Artist for the 1998 Baltimore Ravens Inaugural Stadium Season
