I was born in New York City in 1950 and raised in Valley Stream, New York. After receiving a degree in architecture from Ohio University in 1974 I practiced architecture as well as painted. I have lived and worked in Santa Fe, New Mexico since 1978 and have devoted my full time to painting since the mid 1980’s.

The affinity I have always felt toward Nature continues to fuel my creative drive. Painting continues to intrigue and impassion me providing new ways to stretch and grow. For this I am grateful. It has been a constant companion and certainly my major mode of expression throughout the years.

Literal subject matter has become less important, acting primarily as a vehicle for what I seek in painting. The real subject is the expression of emotion (aroused in me) and the spirit (of the subject). Exploring this through paint and surface in a formal context is what the painting is about. I believe a successfully executed painting must reach further, beyond the abstract or representational, into an intimate spirituality brought about by an individual way of seeing things. In that unique expression is something that relates to the “human experience” despite the passage of time. It is why one can look at a hundred year old painting and say“yes, I know this”. This has nothing to do with trends or commercialism and everything to do with Art.

As for the process and relationship between artist and painting I am often reminded of what Elmer Bischoff said. “You have to bring off a fusion of your interest both in the subject and in the painting. It is like walking a tightrope…the paint on canvas plays a double role--one as an alive, sensual thing in itself, and the other conveying a response to the subject. Between the two is this tightrope.” I like the fact that I need to feel that tension. I feed information onto the canvas until a dialogue begins. Listening becomes paramount, because that is when I discover what the painting needs in order to blossom. There is the tension of trying to hold a piece between “figure/ground” and “all over” painting -- also bringing the paint to the surface in some areas while retaining deep space in others. That type of tension and edge keeps me coming back to paint again and again. 

I have felt a shift in orientation. I am not apart from nature as I seek to express my interpretation of its essence or spirit, but rather that I am part of nature seeking to express myself more clearly and openly. Somehow this seemingly simple realization opens me to the painting because it is more emotional and less analytical. This is the latest part of the journey I feel myself embarking upon.