A lifelong resident of Westport, CT, I grew up here when you couldn’t throw a stone without hitting an artists studio. My uncle was a woodcarver and my cousin, a few years older than me, was a true prodigy and my personal hero. I began painting at twelve and was fascinated with seascapes. A little later I experimented with abstraction. I liked the way it was possible to elicit various and ambiguous impressions from a single composition. After high school I attended The School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and received my BFA from Tufts University. My first two years there were strictly figurative but I eventually returned to abstraction after being struck by a show of Antonio Tapies work. But It’s the work of Paul Klee and Jean Dubuffet that has most greatly influenced my ongoing exploration of color and texture.

In my current painting I will usually begin with an abstract drawing that is what might be termed “automatic”. I try to evade my own conscious control of the process as much as possible at this point, to create more accidental compositions and sometimes vaguely discernible imagery. With the basic drawing done, I then emphasize and develop the parts that interest me, through color and texture. Even though the compositions are intended to be non-representational, they may still evoke a sense of landscape or figure. For instance, the initial work may have the suggestion of a geological location, almost the appearance of rock formation or stone. I consider that a good starting point. It’s like an archeological find and now I have to recreate the history and sense of place. So what starts as purely abstract can end up straddling the figurative world.

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