I began my formal art training at age 28, although I have studied drawing and painting all my life. I graduated from Bucks County Community College, in Pennsylvania, in 1989. I began to accept portrait commissions, although my desire was to paint more expressively than one can expect to paint while on commission. After having painted many portraits in the intervening years, I have now turned away from commissions.
While strong draftsmanship is my first love in art, I am compelled to take a linear structure and create something new with it, something more intriguing to me than straightforward representationalism. My love affair with modern art began in early childhood when my mother was taking a correspondence course in art history. I gained a sense then of how modern masters like Picasso could take an observance of reality and sort of turn it, look at it from a multitude of viewpoints, and make something new and powerful with a marriage of reality and imagination. This approach became very valid to me as a young person, and continues to be the cornerstone of my working philosophy.
I'm in love with shape and color. I like my paintings to have substance, to engage the viewer in an ongoing dialog that intrigues and satisfies, to impart a sense of liveliness and harmony, and to stand the test of time as an asset in an art collection. |
