For most of my career I have been fascinated by the built world and in particular the jumble of rusting industrial sites, aging infrastructure and funky waterways that populated the outskirts of America’s urban centers and the stories these places tell about contemporary life and culture.
All of my urban landscapes are painted on location. I spend hours roaming around an area until I find something that resonates with me. Once I do, I set up my easel and return to a site many times. A large painting can take up to three months to complete. Due to the changing light, I work on one painting in the morning and a second in the afternoon. I’ll often work on a series of paintings and at times I’ve spent several years at one site.
The process of painting on location over a long period of time is crucial to my working method because it allows me to form a deeper connection to a particular place through careful observation and personal interaction with the people I meet there. While talking to people in the area, I learn a lot about the sites that I am painting. I find that this interaction, both with people and the environment, makes the method by which I work as important as the final painting. I consider myself an urban story teller and while I have nothing against painting from photographs, for me being out in the larger world and experiencing it firsthand has made my understanding of the world much richer. My paintings are better because of my direct experience with the sites I paint. Many of the places I’ve painted no longer exist or have drastically changed.
Although my paintings are very detailed, I am less concerned with reproducing an exact replica of a scene and more interested in capturing the spirit of a place.
I’ve been painting urban landscapes on location for over three decades. For the past 19 years I have been painting in the outer boroughs of New York City, primarily in the Bronx, but also in Brooklyn and Queens. Before that, I lived in Northern New Jersey and upon completing my art studies, I started painting on location in the industrial sites that surround Jersey City. It is a practice that has sustained me for decades and it continues to keep me engaged in the world around me.
