FOR MORE THAN 50 YEARS I HAVE BEEN ACTIVELY INVOLVED IN THE DESIGN AND CREATION OF ARTWORK. At first, drawing and sketching, then over the years superseded by a passionate interest in both watercolor and oil painting, photography, and then in 1987 with the introduction of Adobe Photoshop and the incipient digital graphic arts and publishing technology – image editing.  I was occupied with other vocational interests as well – graphic design, typography, pre-press and print production – but those were in the service of a professional career that consumed roughly 30 years. Looking back, I find that through all of the years as a professional designer, I always found the time to study and write about art history, and the materials and techniques of the old master painters, and create artwork, all outside the realm of formal education. 

My work has evolved in roughly four 12-year cycles. Each cycle informed the subsequent one, leading to new insights and revelations about the things that matter to me most about the creation of art – history, composition, color, materials and technique. For example, my trips to national and European art museums in the 1980s significantly informed and influenced my approach to both watercolor and oil painting processes. My 30 years as a graphic designer specializing in print graphics significantly broadened my understanding in many of the techniques and tools I continue to rely and improve upon in the creation of my art. The use of both additive (.cmyk) and subtractive (.rgb) color models, which influence my color palette choices and color mixing, is one example. Another is the experience gained during those years working with professional creative directors and photographers where I gained an understanding of the professional of use of cameras, photography and lighting effects for advertising, which I now use to create compelling compositions for my source materials. The sketching I did every morning at a local café inspired the brush strokes and marks used to create my Café watercolors (you can view them here). Those marks have in turn morphed into the marks I use to create my floral and landscape art in oil.

In the 1990s I returned to oil painting producing a series of “Old Master” large-format works based on reference material collected from numerous trips to art museums in Europe and the United States. In 2004 my family and I moved to Connecticut where I soon began a series of “farm and field” oil paintings focusing mostly on older tractors in landscape settings. In 2012, I began a series of complex large-format highly realistic floral works in the style of the Flemish Old Masters, which continue to evolve. This includes the methods developed and implemented by 16th Century Flemish Old Master painters combined with reliable modern versions of their pigments and special mediums, along with technological advancements in image capture and image editing to develop a composition.

Since September 2023 I have been working on a series of experimental “invented”  landscapes. The paintings are in oil, based on observation and memory and completed in one painting session. These works are developed and executed quite differently from the way I paint the floral works, the former being a much more labor intensive “structured” approach using a full spectral palette of colors and a variety of brushes, the latter being a more “see what happens” approach using only five colors, large inexpensive hardware store brushes, rags, paper towels and my fingers. Both offer up their own challenges and solutions to create compelling compositions.