| A default sense of introspect enabled me to explore my imagination and inevitably render visual answers to self-imposed questions. Questions like; Is what I observe in my surroundings truthful, or is there more there than I can see? How can I express an emotion caused by something I see in visual terms? I realized by focusing on the subject as well as the idea about the subject, I was more able to portray it's essence or truth.
Today, I consider my work to be in the vein of Abstract figurative art. It contains visual shifts between the representational and the non-representational in which distortions and blurs in form expose the psychological nature of a subject. Most of my work adheres to a traditional portraiture or tronie format to retain a sense of recorded time and to draw importance to the subject. I will sometimes use people I know in my work or a collaboration of photographs and live models. I'm influenced by the mastering of light and form by Dutch and Flemish Baroque painters like Rembrandt, Vermeer, Rubens and Pieter Bruegel the Elder as well as modern painters and sculptors such as Giacometti for his use of texture and Jenny Saville for her truth and rawness of subject matter. The List goes on.
My mediums are oil paint on canvas or board and sculpture in clay cast in plaster, resin or bronze. I studied at The Art Students League, NYC and The Academy of Figurative art, NYC, where I had the privilege of studying under Painters Steven Assael, Peter Cox, John Wellington and Leonid Gervits. All Figurative painters. |
