I am a lifelong painter who developed a love for oil paints as a child, during after-school classes at the Ridgewood Art Institute in New Jersey. These early lessons are important to who I am as an artist today in regards to technique, preference for  natural subject matter, and use of color, although my works have become  stylized over the years, most recently to the point of abstraction. After graduating from the University of Colorado in Boulder where I focused on painting and printmaking, I returned to my hometown of Glen Rock, New Jersey and began working as a decorative painter and muralist. After being away from New Jersey during the college years, I developed a new appreciation for my home-state which translated to my canvas paintings. My subject matter became almost strictly the scenes I had loved since I was a child, when summer vacations always included camping around Sussex County New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Seeing the slow encroachment of modern development and also deterioration of structures due to the passage of time, I became focused on capturing these scenes in oils, before the opportunity is gone. 

 

I moved to Portland Oregon in September 2006, seeking a more strikingly beautiful landscape and a slower way of life. During my year in Portland, I dedicated a lot of time to landscapes, painting scenes where I would go on daily walks, with a goal of translating my feelings about a landscape to the viewer through my use of color and movement in the artwork. Landscapes are the images that move me, but my intention is to evoke an emotion or memory from the viewer.  I love when people are drawn to a painting of mine because it reminds them of a place or experience that is personal to their life. I paint images that grab my attention visually, or to capture the “feeling” of the place, regardless of if it is typically beautiful.  Color is important in my communication as an artist. I am especially interested in the role that sunlight plays in a scene; the ultra light warm tones that occur in the brightest areas, the exaggeration of colors as the sun is rising or setting, and the subtle blue and purple tones of a shadow.

 

After a very long, gray winter in Seattle, my life as an artist has taken a great twist technically, but is still rooted in my traditional use of color and inspiration from the great outdoors. With the daffodils, tulips and blue sky bringing Seattle back to life this past spring, I discovered the excitement of painting with less boundaries and more exaggerated strokes by using the palette knife. I began exploring this technique by using the knife to paint some landscapes and street scenes, and most recently abstract works. Sometimes the painting takes on a life of its own, with the strokes suggesting what the painting wants to become. I may start a painting thinking about rain clouds, but somewhere along the way the painting becomes a sunburst through birch trees. Welcoming the unexpected has lead to uniquely abstract work with a life and texture that is new to me, and I’m excited to share these new paintings with other art lovers.