I grew up in the mountains of western Maine. My parents both taught at Gould Academy—my mother taught English and my father taught English and photography—and I graduated from Gould in 1981. Childhood felt like a giant playground: running, jumping, digging holes, and hurtling down hills on skis, skateboards, and bicycles.
I left for college at Davidson College (B.A., Studio Art, 1985) and completed an M.F.A. in painting and sculpture at the University of Tennessee in 1989. After that my playground expanded to everything between Maine and Georgia, with long Greyhound rides and frequent trips west and north toward James Bay. The adventures continued—this time including small rock climbs and short white‑water runs.
My professional life has alternated between teaching art and art history and working in digital imaging and publishing. I embraced early tools—Photoshop, PageMaker—and helped publishers adapt. When digital video emerged, I built interactive CD‑ROMs of Shakespeare. By the mid‑1990s the web overtook CD‑ROMs, and within a few years I was helping higher‑education institutions move their marketing materials online.
After two decades in web programming and content, I returned to explore photographic and image‑based work more deeply. At heart I’m still a maker, thinking like a painter about picture space and the construction (and deconstruction) of three‑dimensional illusion on a two‑dimensional plane. I enjoy long, often spirited debates about art history—about quoting Caravaggio alongside Ellsworth Kelly, for instance—and I’m fascinated by how images tell stories, shape narratives, and reflect ideas.
I’m candid about my practice: I want to be better at storytelling, and I am getting there. Through stubbornness and steady work I’m building a body of images that aims to both reflect and embody themes that matter to me—history, memory, aspiration, failure, and resilience.
During the COVID pandemic my family moved to far western Massachusetts—much like Maine but smaller—where I work as a web programmer, photographer, and video producer for the region’s largest employer, the county health system. The work exposes me daily to moments that are both inspiring and heartbreaking.
If you prefer a more clinical discussion, I can be reached at pooley@wickednifty.com and on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pooley/.