Other interests competed for his attention, however, namely music. As an entering student at Chapman College, Gladson approached the music department to plan his coursework. As luck would have it, Gladson came at a time when all the professors were out of the office. Spying the teachers milling around the art department's office across the hall, Gladson went over to casually see about enrolling in an art class or two. Hours later, Gladson had switched his major to art and was enrolled in all art classes. He has never looked back since. After receiving his M.A. from California State University and going on to additional graduate coursework at University of California in Los Angeles, Gladson received an Assistant Professorship at California State University in Northridge. In 1973, he became Professor of Art at El Camino College, where he continues to teach today.
As a top ranking American landscape painter, Gladson's work is part of the permanent collections of both the San Francisco Museum of Art and the Oakland Museum of Art. His art is part of many corporate and private collections, including the Fluor Corporation, Neiman Marcus, AT&T, Toyota, Price Waterhouse, Federated Stores, Bullocks Department Stroe, Cannell & Chaffin, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, Weyerhauser, Rutan & Tucker, Loeb & Loeb, Warner Brothers, Welton Becket, General Mills, UCLA School of Business, Chapman University, Port of Long Beach, and the California Association of Realtors. You can also see his paintings on display at various hotels including Sheraton, Hilton, Westin, Radisson, Marriott, Good Earth Restaurants, the Beverly Hills Hotel, and the Beverly Wilshire Hotel.
Gladson is one of those unique individuals who can take a single idea and expand it into any number of self-contained variations of deeply evocative atmosphere and beauty. They are interior paraphrases in a language of highly introspective symbolism, a soft lyrical poetry.