Growing up on Long Island, NY, my interest in art started early, when I would spend hours poring over my collection of comic books. I would study and draw my favorite characters every chance I had and imagine myself as one of the artists when I grew up. With my first exposure to formal training in my early twenties, I was encouraged to try my hand at oil painting and immediately fell in love with everything about it—the scent of paint and turpentine smells like home to me.
While my favorite subject is the human form and face, the thing I really get excited about is the way that colors and textures build as a painting progresses. When I view a painting, I take as much pleasure studying the surface of a small section of canvas as I do when I stand back to take the whole thing in. I can get happily lost in a square inch of paint on canvas.
My primary influences are the French and American Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. Van Gogh, Gauguin, Degas, Sargent, and Mary Cassatt rank among my favorite artists. Not to mention Daniel Greene, the renowned portrait artist I studied with at the Art Students League of New York.
In 1984, I realized a long-time dream moving from New York to New Hampshire. Here I found new creative opportunities to explore working as a magazine Art Director, and later as a freelance Graphic Designer and Illustrator.
2008 marks a return to fine art for me with a career change hopefully leading back to painting full-time. I’m interested in exploring ways of incorporating the graphic style of comic book art and some of the things I’ve learned working in design into my painting as my work moves forward.
EDUCATION
1974–77 Stevenson Academy of Traditional Painting
1977–79 Art Students League of New York
At the League I was awarded the Merit Scholarship for the 1978–1979 school term and later won the prestigious Art Students League Purchase Prize, which placed one of my paintings in the League’s permanent collection.
AWARDS
1977 Knickerbocker Exhibition, NYC
Windsor and Newton Materials Prize
1979 Salmagundi Scholarship Show, NYC
Award of Merit
1979 Art Students League of NY Concourse Show
Art Students League Purchase Prize
1986 Allied Artists of America juried exhibition
John Young-Hunter Memorial Award
1986 Sharon Arts Center juried exhibition
Award of Merit for oil painting |
