Roger was born and raised in Watsonville, California, a beautiful region along the northern California coast. He spent much of his youth hunting pheasants, quail, waterfowl and fishing for trout and steelhead. Roger’s first upland painting was a watercolor which he gave to his father on Father’s Day, it was a ringneck pheasant being flushed from cover he and his dad often hunted.
Late in high school, his close neighborhood friend encouraged Roger to take an art class where he could channel his creative ideas. “It was in my first painting class my senior year where my teacher showed me pictures of Winslow Homer’s sporting images of the Adirondacks and the remote regions of the Canadian wilderness. I must admit a ‘buzz’ went through me that day that has never left”, says Roger. “I was so hooked on the idea of painting what I love, that whatever professional ideas I had previously, soon vanished.”