For almost his entire life Rip has been working as an artist predominately choosing to work in the serigraph medium for most of his creative expressions. Serigraph is the fine art term for silk-screening all done by hand for the express purpose of creating a fine art print. Rip’s work is known for its vibrant use of color and his amazing ability to use up to a hundred colors per screen. Using his squeegee to blend many colors to show beautiful atmospheric skies and tremendous depth of space instead of the traditional one color, one screen method of silk-screening that is most commonly seen. Rip likes to say he uses his squeegee more as a paint brush than just pushing one flat color through the screen, and in doing so achieving amazing results. Rip spent eighteen months in Viet Nam during the war and even though this was a very dark time for him he also loved and appreciated that part of the world and its culture. He made several trips during this period to Japan where he was very influenced by the lovely block prints of the turn of the century. You can see and feel this influence in his present day work, certainly with a modern flair and style uniquely Rip’s own.

Rip grew up in Northern New Jersey and spent most of his childhood exploring nature which is his first love. One of his favorite haunts of boyhood was The GreatSwamp where to this day he loves to recall the beautiful sunsets he saw there or the fog blanketed on the water. He was and still is fascinated by all phenomena of nature and is endlessly studying small creatures and large alike. For the last three years he has been raising Cicropia moths and Luna moths for the sheer joy of watching them go through all their different stages of evolution before their final beautiful emergence as a moth. He is often asked "why he does this?" To which he always looks a bit puzzled by this question as if to say wouldn’t everyone want to raise moths? Usually he will just say "I do....because I can". That comment is actually Rip’s entire approach to his life and it is evident in his art work still today.

Rip graduated from ParsonsCollege in Iowa in 1967 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. He worked as a technical illustrator for the government upon his return from his tour of duty in Viet Nam. He found the work stifling and often not holding with his pacifist beliefs so he moved on to teaching art at a private school for two years. Rip has always marched to the beat of a different drummer so ultimately there was only one career path that truly makes him happy and that is creating his art.

Rip lives with his artist wife Judith and their two sons in Blooming Grove, Pennsylvania. You will most often see him in his tie dyed shirts "talking philosophy" or "rapping ideologies" at art and craft shows through out the Northeast. Usually arriving in his 1970 vintage VW Bus or vintage motor home!