About THE ARTIST

Despite life's all-consuming routines, work, family and a lifestyle steeped in sports, I have always had a yearning for the arts; it has simmered for years—decades—under the demands of making a living and raising a family, only passively manifesting itself in the miscellany of gallery and museum visits.

Driving to my Systems Analyst job in January 2000, I passed an "Art Studio Available" sign in Stoughton, Massachusetts. I rented a studio, brought in supplies and began painting and interacting with kindred minds. As the months passed, it became self-evident that I would be painting for the rest of my life. When I'm absorbed in a painting, hours pass like minutes—such is the litmus test of one's passion.

My artistic influences—after my mother who was a gifted artist and my father who was a play-by-ear musician—include the painterly style of Sargent; the spare moodiness of Carierre, the tempestuous splashes of Turner and the delicious umbers, siennas and ochres of the Dutch masters. I love the romance of oils, their smells and textures and accidentals—the fact that it takes time and patience and controlled enthusiasm to complete a work. On good days in the studio, I feel very much that I am living the 1890's Parisian dream; on bad days, I fortify myself with the words of Delacroix, "Finishing a painting demands a heart of steel."

A constant thematic focus for me has been capturing the spirit of the blues on canvas, e.g., blues musicians, juke joint scenes and the general exuberance reflected in a uniquely American jewel.

After reading a book on Django Reinhardt, I became drawn to the fascinating, seedy history of the Romani (gypsies) in Paris of the 1930s. Although the true plight of Roma is one of steady migration, overwhelming poverty and historical persecution, the majority of my Roma pieces concentrate on the romantic notion of dancers—beautiful bejeweled women pirouetting with swirling scarves. My series really took flight when I decided to work directly with models—freely posed in the studio with light and shadow at my control.

After 28 years in Boston, I moved to Minneapolis in 2017 and coincidentally have widened my subject matter considerably as I now easily gravitate to almost any genre which stimulates me.

In addition to my oil painting, I continue to work with charcoal in gesture and figure studies. In this vein, I've taken some very old sheet music—often worn, torn or stained—and created charcoal and pencil sketches loosely based on the mood evoked by the various titles. I thoroughly enjoy this artistic marriage, enlivening largely discarded material with a complementary artistic statement; often the musical notations work themselves into the sketch itself.