Rebirth....And my First Blog Post

Every artist has an experience that changes them permanently. For Joe,
that day was September 11, 2001. With an office and staff on the 105th floor
of the World Trade Center, more than 160 of Joe’s colleagues and friends died
in the tragedy. He retired from the world of finance, and entered the Art
world shortly thereafter.

In his former business life, Joe was the CEO of a multi-billion dollar
Insurance firm and a senior sales executive for AON Corporation for 27
years, a Fortune 250 Company where he specialized in structuring catastrophe
insurance protections including Directors & Officers Liability Policies for
Fortune 250 companies and other large institutions. His clients included
Donald Trump, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Henry Kissinger, President Ford,
& Jack Welch. Client Companies included GE, GM, UPS, Coca Cola,
American Express, UAL, Microsoft, Revlon, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley,
Monsanto, Anheuser Busch, & Citicorp among others.

The illustrations & imagery displayed on this site were initially
created to illustrate the lyrics of songs that Joe has written and
composed. A number of these songs are contained on a CD you can find
on this site,entitled Trials of the Heart. A book of the same name has
also been published. The book and Music CD are devoted to lyrical expressions
involving the affairs of the human heart; man’s desperate search for Love
and Intimacy. Joe has written 46 songs during the past several years and
is working with music producers in hopes that they will be sung by popular
artists.

Joe’s initial problem resided in the fact that he has had no formal
training,no training actually, in the art of drawing, sketching, or painting.
This merely made things more difficult and challenging; but it didn’t
make the task of bringing lyrics to life via powerful imagery impossible The
images he creates are the product of a man and his mouse working on Adobe
Photoshop CS2. Starting with a blank white screen as canvas, Joe uses the
tools designed to touch up and repair aged or damaged photos to craft an
image he has in his mind’s eye.

Joe is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame ‘74 and obtained an
MBA inFinance from the University of Chicago ‘77. He has just earned a Masters
Degree from Regis University in Liberal Arts with a focus on the Age of
Alexander the Great.. He loves reading, has a passion for History, and
marvels at the Creative Geniuses of the world. Joe has traveled much of the
world, and yet finds there is just so much more to learn, and so much more
to experience!