About
By the time I entered grade school, my father introduced me to the European masters: from DaVinci to Caravaggio to Degas, I spent countless hours tracing and copying drawings. It didn’t take me long to fall in love with art making of all kinds.
My formal studies began at age 14 when I enrolled in a life drawing class at Long Island University where I was taught the 19th century Nicolaides Drawing Method. Through a series of drawing exercises over multiple years of practice I began to have a firm understanding of how to “see” and express the human form in all its complexity and beauty. Four years later I received a scholarship to Pratt Institute where I studied the fine art of print making. After graduation I co-founded a small gallery in the Lower East Side of New York City called 10 BC that gave young emerging artist a place to show and sell their work. Not willing to take the vow of poverty and chastity so often required to live the life of an artist in NY, I became an entrepreneur in the graphic arts, all the while continuing to create fine art. That all changed in 2016 when I decided to live the lifelong of an artist and paint full time.
Although my current work is based on photographs, it’s not intended to be a photo-realistic or ultra-realistic. My focus is on the abstractions within the images caused by reflections in polished surfaces or the folds of fabric or the lines in a model’s face. While the cars I paint are considered rolling works of art, my fascination expands beyond their form or how they visually interact with their environment. It’s detailed differences between surfaces and materials and how they reflect and refract light to create beautiful abstractions that find interesting. When viewed from a distance, they blend to become an image of automotive beauty but when viewed up close they’re reminiscent of the paintings of Franz Kline or Clifford Stills.
Car designers like Franco Scaglione, Harley Earl, Batista Pininfarina, Ferdinand Porsche and Max Hoffman created some of finest pieces of rolling art ever produced. I recognized their complex curves as being just as important aesthetically as Degas bathers or Modigliani’s nudes. They are sensual, even startling in their sexuality. We instantly recognize those forms on a deeper level. They create by us, for us, as us, in a way no other utilitarian object is.