Artist Statement

I have spent most of my life painting, traveling to study, but always returning. I cannot remember when I have not found expression through painting at once challenging and gratifying. Art can be one’s focus for a lifetime, and here in America we are very fortunate to experience a constantly changing landscape from which visually one can draw so much. The eventual harmonization of the outer world with the inner self is a project each artist endeavors to complete; and if he is successful, it will recur with each painting.

You will find no figures in my landscapes, despite the fact that much of my intent is to reflect and to express the value and effects of human effort on our common surroundings. The geometries we have carved out of and created upon our landscapes are alive with linear beauty and, too often, a haunting desecration. I find that when figures are present in a painting it is too easy for the viewer to create a narrative for the piece, by which I mean a story that she might think I am trying to tell. I am not trying to tell stories. Yes, natural and man-made structures anchor a painting in a reality imagined anew by each viewer, while allowing a strong focus on a play of abstraction in color, texture, and line for the artist, but my intent is to direct that imagining to the form and the color of the work, and thereby into the emotion of it.