I paint what I see, feel or imagine, often trying to combine all options.  My motivations are often based on contradictory impulses leading to an indefinite conclusion rather than trying for a vision or ideal which is out of reach.  I like to use heightened impressions of ordinary surroundings and circumstances and try to find atmosphere and mood in the commonplace.  My paintings are places or events that I choose to dwell in for a while.  I often use prints of bad digital photographs as reference points or maps that help me get to those places.  I work mostly in acrylics on canvas, or hardboard when I want to get “physical” with a painting.  Lately I’ve been experimenting with mixed media adding collage elements and using oil pastels on my acrylic paintings.  When I paint, Jazz or the Blues are usually playing in the background.    

I consider myself a semi-educated artist in that I’ve taken classes at places like the Art Students League and the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan but don’t have any degrees in art and try to learn through working. To me painting is often an adventure in a search for meaning, a record of a discourse between what’s going on inside of me and what’s going on outside of me.

I was selected for a solo show at the Monmouth Museum for their 2014 Emerging Artist Series.  I’ve been part of dual artist shows at the Hamilton Gallery in 2016 (Road Work) and 2019 (Midnight Mercury).  While working as an x-ray technician I had paintings on 7 covers of the trade magazine “Radiologic Technology” after being a winner in their cover contest. In 2023 I was awarded a solo show at the Center of Contemporary Art in Bedminster, New Jersey.

A lot of my previous work was based on impressions from my long drives home from work going North up Route 1 in New Jersey.  The pressures and frustrations from the work day would dissolve into the colors of night as I decompressed.  The neon lights against the dark streets, the penumbra of the traffic lights, the darkened geometries and odd shadows from the artificial light on the strip malls that I passed with their lit up window displays.  The reflections on a wet night. I like the feeling of the boundaries dissolving between the real and the abstract.   I try to put some of that magic atmosphere, mystery and mood in my paintings.

Music helped me through the past years of Covid, lockdown and political turmoil.  Youtube had a number of performances that inspired me to “slice and dice” images of my favorites and reconstruct them as paintings.  I’ve become a bit more experimental in recent paintings. They are an adventure in intuition and free association with social commentary dropping in on occasion. The narrative can get surreal, reflecting my reaction to the times we live in. Representation and abstraction mix  and develop as a reaction to what I’ve initially put on a canvas rather than following a previously determined conception.  It’s allowed me to enjoy creating a more textural surface and heightened color relations.

Since retiring I’ve been able to take some classes that help me with the craft.  I’ve ventured more into portraiture with a model and “en plein air” painting.