I am a painter because I love the sense of depth, motion, space and time I can create with paint. It usually takes a lot of work and sacrifice, that is the X-ing out of perfectly well-executed areas, to get the effect of five dimensions that I am after. A rich effect can thus be had by layering, but even so a rich effect is not an absolute given of painting and repainting. In the past I used to say that the content of a picture doesn't matter much, that it's really the way you say it that matters; but I have come to realize that my own pictures are chock full of content. This content need not be explained, for I believe the pictures are complete, at least until I change them again. Even so, it may safely be said that I love a sense of dread mixed with something humorous or strange. The overall effect should somehow be beautiful, engaging and mesmerizing. Anything less would be a waste of canvas and sensuous paint.

    I received a B.F.A. at Parsons School of Design in Paris, France in 1989. I had two particularly fantastic and influential teachers, one of whom was obsessed with Giacommetti. There is still something very Giacommetti inside of me. I know now that Giacommetti was inside of most of my favorite painters- Matisse, Rembrandt, De Kooning, Morandi etc. and that it is, rather, a way of looking at the world and art, an urgency to refine and revise. One or two of these paintings on this website are in fact no longer with us because I took this tendency to an extreme and destroyed some fine "quick" paintings and even a few that had been quite thoroghly gone over many times. I am trying to be more careful and learn when to stop. One may notice that I've been painting political figures and newscasters lately. Without taking a stance, I am still trying to impart a sense of dread and hopefully humor. I am also trying to familiarize people with faces they might not have known. Yes they are giants but they are clumsy and they don't look very good. I feel that if Velazquez could make "political" art unpolitical and purely painterly, then it's a worthy aim for me, and my first debt goes to the quality of the painting rather than the person or message in it. I was also partially inspired, though I did my Condoleezza painting before I knew about her, to paint from photographs by Elizabeth Peyton who made me realize how we now view people and famous people from snap shots. She makes snap shots more profound because it's the way we see the world (figures) now. Painting from a photograph used to be a big taboo for me because the four-dimensionality of the person's presence is absolutely GONE from such a painting, but for my purposes, a plastic, frozen instant is also useful. I have already said more than I meant to. Over and out.