Artist Statement
Realistic in my perception and approach, I paint aerial views that represent the diverse places and spaces of the contemporary landscape. Pursuing this novel approach to picture making, one discovers in the aerial vantage point, a modern perspective and a fresh visual vocabulary. It offers a viewpoint of reduced depth and a different perspective, creating less predictable detail and more abstract shapes while retaining the essence of the area. Drawing from the elevated position of high-rise buildings and commercial jets, I produce images of cities and towns, factories and farmlands, power plants, pastures, and woodlands.
More than just a recording of the contemporary landscape, it is my interpretation and vision. The paintings combine elements of abstraction and representation, pattern and grid, surface and illusion, as well as observation, imagination, and memory. Whether hovering vertiginously above city streets and highways, floating serenely over the countryside, or soaring above towns, harbors, and monuments, I examine the relationships between the manmade and the natural, urban and rural, agrarian and industrial, and the worlds of power, labor, and leisure.
My people paintings are also commentaries. In the portraits, which are often from old photographs, I pursue a stylized impression of another era. Tastes and fashions may change, but the most basic of human needs, desires, and dreams are timeless and universal. Working from the lens of the camera I capture the moment, but beyond the picture, the image tells a universal story about people or places, allowing viewers to fill in their own insight.
As a realist, the world created is infused with color—the blue of a cloudless sky, the emerald hue of a manicured lawn, the crimson sheen of a new car—while my focus remains on the expression of the characters. The work can be understood on many levels, from the simple interplay of shape and color to the narrative of the pictorial story.
Artist Background
Philadelphia College of Art
Bachelor of Fine Arts, 1969
Parsons The New School for Design, 2000
Press