ARTIST STATEMENT

My sense of picture making is rooted in a variety of influences.  I would definitely say nature is foremost mixed with the arts of primitive cultures as well as the great artists of Abstract Expressionism School of the late 1940’s to the early 1960’s.  I have always loved Oriental art and African art.  I like to make pictures for the same reason that I like to look at all kinds of art.  That is to say, being visually stimulated, to compose images with color, shapes, textures, to allude to something rather than define something.  My work in a lot of ways celebrates the simple joy of seeing.  To look at things with imagination and free association.  Abstraction suits my visual interests just right.  Creating work that engages both the eye and the imagination seamlessly is what I seek.  I think of myself as an artist on a life-long subtle quest to find beauty and poetry in the visual world and to bring into being paintings and collages revealing what my eyes see and mind thinks as well as, how my eyes think and my mind sees.