Portfolio of Works

Monhegan is very special to me. It is the land that time forgot. You feel like you're back in time to an era a hundred years ago, no cars, no paved roads, and electricity and phone service have only existed for the last twenty years or so. It’s very small but to paraphrase George Bellows, there is an entire continent of subject matter on this tiny island. There are grand cliffs and beautiful old New England architecture, and beautiful forests covering most of the island. There is a charming harbor full of lobster boats and just offshore there is Mañana, a beautiful even more tiny island.  Everywhere you look there are scenes that are perfectly composed to make a painting. And often those scenes you are painting are exactly the same ones that my favorite artists painted a hundred years ago.

I have always loved cars and trucks. As a 5-year-old kid riding with my father I would stand up on the front seat and tell him the make of each passing car. I drew cars all the time. That’s how I learned to draw. I grew up in The Hudson Valley of New York. My friends were all car nuts too. We would go out wandering around looking for abandoned ones. When I was in art school I started painting these abandoned trucks sitting in fields swallowed up in tall grass and rusting away. I love painting them. The rust and the dents are a record of a life lived. I think of these as portraits. I want to capture what is special about each one. And here’s a bit of trivia-in other languages the term autoportrait is what we call a self-portrait. 

Because of my love for old cars I have wanted to go to Cuba for as long as I can remember. I finally had the opportunity in 2016 when an artist friend organized a trip for a group of painters. Setting foot in Havana I was like a kid in a candy shop. I was overwhelmed. The old cars were everywhere. They dominate the scene in Havana. That plus the grand but decaying architecture was everything I had ever imagined and more than lived up to my expectations. I had the opportunity to go back in January 2021 and again I was so excited to experience it once more. Like Monhegan Island, it is a place where everywhere you look there is something that calls to me to paint it. I want to go back. 

It is such a pleasure to live in Maine. There is such a diversity of subject matter. You have the beautiful coast with its beaches and inlets and coves. You have the grand cliffs looming over the ocean, the rolling hills sometimes covered with the bright red out of season blueberries, and the mountains with their grandeur and their panoramic views. And of course, you have Acadia National Park which has all of these wonderful features. And of course, you have charming small towns with their great old New England architecture. And lighthouses. There is so much to see and so much to paint. There’s a reason so many artists have found their way here.  

I lived in New York City my whole adult life until a few years ago when we moved to Maine. I was in Park Slope Brooklyn which is a beautiful old neighborhood. I was a block away from Prospect Park, a big beautiful park with lots of woods and wildlife and a beautiful lake. It was a beautiful place and a great place to paint. The neighborhood with its streets lined with old brownstones was an inspiring place and fun to paint. And unlike Manhattan, it was pretty easy to paint there as the streets were not crowded and the people who came by were excited and supportive of seeing something so unusual going on in their neighborhood. I also liked to make excursions down to the East River to paint the Brooklyn Bridge and the back streets of DUMBO and off in the distance the Statue of Liberty.