My work revolves around la joie de vivre. I find this joy of life expressed in the panoply of colors that we experience everyday; the sun beaming down on one’s face and the intricate subtleties of people. My paintings remind viewers to recognize these colors as wondrous, rather than mundane. Realizing as well that there are many complex truths behind the facades, I find joy in other aspects of the world around me as well. My portraits reveal that, despite the mere one percent of genetic coding that differentiates us, individuals display diverse psyches and distinct souls. These human wonders become animated in their possessions; boats illustrate so much about their owners, and houses reveal the lives and deaths of their inhabitants, exposing eras of war and peace, prosperity and decay. My paintings can be read as narratives as well as placed in a space and time.
Informed by the everyday-ness and individuality of my subjects, I paint in plein air, face to face with the images I represent, to capture the essence of the subject. In the hills of the Norman landscape, magnificent gardens, apple orchards, and cows, sheep and goats for cheese integrate with inspired, aged architecture. My depictions of the regionalist architectural designs reveal the area’s vast history, of which the D-Day beaches are just the tip of the ice burg. One must think about the generations that lived inside of them. Houses allow us to identify with the site on a personal level; rather than just a point on a map, the architecture lets us place the land and the people of a region, provoking the history therein.
The series of boats, painted in Chicago, as well as the series of portraits, demand to be read differently. The boats are intriguing because of how much they relay about their owners; motor versus sail boat, size, colors, and ornamentation. Likewise, a face, a demeanor, the shoes one wears for a sitting, and the way in which the sitter reclines describe many aspects of a personality. My portraits of boats and people are two different kinds of language frozen on the canvas for the viewer to read.
Panoramic paintings require another type of analysis. These can be read literally like a book. I took into account the fact that I encountered these images while on foot, moving past them as opposed to standing still. The terrain I uncovered became a narrative series of images; unlike a sole house or tree, the landscapes and villages provided a similar experience of revelation. For example, Family of Trees #2, is a meadow that was once a peach orchard. A Chicago businessman bought the land and converted it into a golf course. The countryside has been left fallow for a number of years wild growth now covers it. This history has shaped the field. Appearing neither natural, nor synthetic like a planted garden, the site is an interesting mixture. Like people in a city, this diverse series of trees have come together in one communal area. The viewer scans the scene with his eyes as I did on foot. Like the words in a book, the images, indeed the particular hues and brushstrokes are part of the language of painting that tells a story.
These works are all part of an ongoing investigation into the myriad of the colors of life.
