When I began my artistic studies I was fortunate to receive excellent training in an atelier which connected me to a rich artistic heritage, a master pupil lineage which can be traced back to the French Academician Jean Leon Gerome. That tradition is a reinforcing influence in my own work. The challenge for me as a contemporary artist is to add something new, to take that tradition and reform it to fit my own vision.
Essentially, my paintings are about beauty. Whether it be in my still life work, where I begin with a consideration of just the abstract elements of form and color, and then try to build interest with the careful arrangement of simple objects or in the interior scenes which are usually about light and atmosphere and mood, beauty is always the first subject.
In some of my work I enjoy a kind of visual pun, as in the still life series called Plumage, where the juxtaposition of hats and bird’s nests are so similar in shape and each having the element of the feathers. The paintings of my Museum series are undertaken with an implied wink at the depiction of paintings within paintings.
Though I see painting as first and foremost a craft, it isn’t only that. Painting is about projecting that craft through a personality, memory and emotion in the attempt to capture an intangible thing, which speaks in a language unavailable to another mode of expression.
