My interest in the arts began when I was very young. My parents, though they may not have realized it at the time, raised me in an environment that nurtured my appreciation for art and the creative process. I grew up at a time in the United States when the public school system provided a rich creative curriculum. I spent many hours painting and drawing as a boy.

I developed my creative interests when schools had large well-funded Art and Music departments. My high school art department was no exception and I spent many hours as possible there, which included coming in on the weekends. I also joined the school art club where my fellow students and I created team projects such as large joint paintings and silk-screened calendars where each member designed one of the twelve months.

During my time in high school I was able to take courses in painting, sculpture, commercial design, silkscreen printing, jewelry design and yes-even rug making. We had two full time art teachers and two very large classrooms full of supplies. Over those four years I immersed myself in everything they had to offer. It’s hard to imagine something like that existing in today’s word of publicly funded education.

Of the studio courses I studied in college as an Art Education major, I found that I was drawn mainly to painting. It was the powerful simplicity of abstract and non-objective art works that captured me. Works from schools of the Futurism, Cubism and The Russian Avant-Garde movements were the images I returned to over and over. Kasimir Malevich, Wassily Kandinsky and Lyubov Popova were sources of my inspiration. My experiences with art during those years were very rewarding.

I moved to San Francisco in the early 70’s and worked in several art galleries as an assistant director, administrator and salesperson. I attended evening art classes whenever possible. Eventually I found work with a large corporation and during those years my time for art became more limited.

It wasn’t until I moved to Oregon that I once again began to paint. I work mainly with oil pigment and oil stick. I am most drawn to painting large formats. I would describe my current paintings as abstract, emotive and vivid. I believe hue and passion are closely related. My paintings display a vigorous use of color and movement.

Abstractionism to me is a simplification of our daily experience. It’s a visual language where form, hue and line exist independently of any reference to the world we live in. I face two opposing forces as I create: representation versus abstraction. I work to leave the “known” out of my paintings and to challenge perception. This is my ultimate goal. I avoid the rational filters in our lives and only rely on my senses to find the solution. I believe if I can engage the viewer for only a few moments to ponder what they see then I am painting in the right direction.

When laying out a new painting I enjoy the process of fragmenting my subject matter. I work to reduce the form close to almost a monochromatic scale and I layout my paintings in black, white and a range of grays prior to applying much color. In my paintings I strive to study objects from a variety of points while attempting to draw the viewing eye along a path that takes them to new vantage points that at first they may not have seen.

My paintings include forms that overlap and intersect causing new textures and shapes to appear. I am intrigued about the fact that with even a few strokes of the brush and one or two changes in hue the suggestion of a new form is born. I think people naturally want to see something they recognize when they look at an abstract or non-objective piece of artwork. When it comes to my goals about what I paint I hope the viewer finds something new each time they look at one of my paintings.

Recently I completed a group of twelve paintings entitled the “Materializations Series”. Each piece is 48X48 and a progression of its immediate predecessor. Setting out to paint this series was a process and an evolution for me. At times I felt I was working on one very long continuous work that had no end. After completing the series I found that the very first and very last painting in the series brought me the most satisfaction.

I continue to paint today however I’ve made a significant departure recently and have become captivated with the process of collage. In my current collage work I’ve incorporated recycled materials such as 35-millimeter negatives along with scanned and reprocessed images of my ancestors. I have included digital images of everyday objects from my life such as a marble, a tin horse, foliage and flowers from my garden. The creative experience of assembling these works is enhanced by the story telling aspect. To circumvent copyright infringement issues I’ve elected to create all my own media printed in the archival inkjet process to ensure longevity against fading.