My work is about capturing the emotional sense of places and people, more than likeness. The joy of painting for me is the same as its challenge, that is to understand and convey the essence of the scene, how it strikes my senses and emotions. Each piece is an adventure starting with a potential success.
I believe that most of us experience a scene or a place very similarly . . . and the painter is something of a poet who evokes the essences of these experiences, not with words but with pigments. A successful painting for me is essentially a path to emotive and sensual memory of the viewer.
Sometimes these memories are of places alone, and sometimes they involve people. In landscapes and still lifes, a narrative aspect (a story being told) may exist but it is supplied more by the viewer. The narrative element is often more prominent when people are in the painting. I think that is one reason I enjoy including the figure more and more as I progress through life.
For me, prior painters are the canon we draw from, but I am most inspired in my own work by the impressionists, the Nabis such as Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard, the wellspring American illustrator-painters Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper and NC Wyeth, and painters of the California School Richard Diebenkorn and Wayne Thiebault who push the interplay of color, realism and abstraction.
I believe that most of us experience a scene or a place very similarly . . . and the painter is something of a poet who evokes the essences of these experiences, not with words but with pigments. A successful painting for me is essentially a path to emotive and sensual memory of the viewer.
Sometimes these memories are of places alone, and sometimes they involve people. In landscapes and still lifes, a narrative aspect (a story being told) may exist but it is supplied more by the viewer. The narrative element is often more prominent when people are in the painting. I think that is one reason I enjoy including the figure more and more as I progress through life.
For me, prior painters are the canon we draw from, but I am most inspired in my own work by the impressionists, the Nabis such as Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard, the wellspring American illustrator-painters Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper and NC Wyeth, and painters of the California School Richard Diebenkorn and Wayne Thiebault who push the interplay of color, realism and abstraction.