"Wild Backyard"

oil on canvas
40 x 44 inches

Abstract in their outward appearance, my paintings, drawings and prints derive from the landscapes of my experience. I grew up and live in New England and have found endless inspiration in the environment and ocean waters here. My travels through Italy and France over the last 30 years, ground my work in the idea of beauty and light in nature, in painting and in the History of Art. Recently, a move to the wooded Southeast Massachusetts have brought influences of the natural world from my more immediate surroundings of forests and farmlands to my studio work.

I come to the canvas free of preconceptions and open to the possibilities of discovery. The paintings are built, color upon color in sometimes thin, sometimes thicker layers of oil paint, using brushes and trowels with marks both improvised and borrowed from my drawings of plant life and trees. In a language of contemporary abstraction, I strive in my work to find illuminated spaces with the resonance of memory in light and color. I look at my paintings as if I am looking across a landscape I could swear I once visited. I walk long distances without moving.

My time as a student in Illustration instilled in me a great appreciation for drawing from life and from nature. My work has evolved in directions I could not have anticipated since my time at RISD, but the foundation in drawing, color and the craft of painting remains as the basis for my studio practice today.