I am a traditional realist painter. My subject matter is drawn from my travels in Europe, Morocco, Iceland and Greenland, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the American Southwest and West, as well as from the less exotic landscape of New Jersey. I often incorporate architectural subjects in my work, a result of writing and illustrating three books on Caribbean historic architecture. I also enjoy doing still life, especially when it includes glass.
For 15 years I worked in pastel, always striving to become more painterly in my work; then it occurred to me to just use paint! I have been working in acrylics ever since. I am influenced by the work of the California Impressionists, and have studied acrylic painting with William Hook and John Poon, both western landscape artists, as well as oil painter Tim Horn.
Painting for me is a response to loss, an attempt to catch hold of fleeting moments of beauty. It is about love, about memory, about keeping things –– when I paint something I see it, know it more intimately than I otherwise would, and it becomes mine forever. I paint because I feel as if everything I’ve seen and loved in my life, as well as everything I see now, is clamoring to be born as a painting. I hope to still be painting when I’m 100 years old.