Chase was born in Kansas City, Kansas in 1947. He attended the Kansas City Art Institute and later, Albany State College. "My dream, which never altered or waned was to be a painter... or an actor, or a playwright." Seminal influences include Picasso, Van Gogh, Matisse and Jackson Pollock.

An automobile accident derailed his art studies; after a four-year military tour, Chase returned to school to earn advanced degrees in Mathematics and Business. That was followed by marriage, fatherhood, and a 27 year business career.

But, his inclination was always to remain active in the arts. He continually sketched, creating thousands of drawings, in addition to writing and exploring museums. "I've been to hundreds around the world," Chase recalls. "New York's MOMA, the Musee d'Orsay, and the Picasso Museum in Paris remain my favorites."

Three years ago he retired to Paris to pursue his childhood ambition in the city he'd fallen in love with during a visit some thirty years before. This period has become his most prolific to date. The joy of finally "living his dream" is obvious in his recent abstracts, landscapes, nudes and still lifes.

"Each style requires a different approach and palette," he explains, while admitting a partiality to hot, vivid, "clean" colors—the influence of his early artistic heroes. "Still lifes are fun to do, especially the way that I paint them with nonobjective forms and shapes."

Chase is currently trying out yet another style of nature morte, inspired by a recent retrospective of Nicolas de Staël (1914-1955). "To bad he died so young," Chase observes. "I would love to have seen his later work."

"I am anxious to see how my own work evolves."