As a figurative artist, I prefer working as much as possible from direct observation. The world we observe is God’s creation and its riches are inexhaustible. I have been concerned with combining figures in landscapes to fortify the emotive possibilities of these traditional genres.
My wife and children are musicians. Observing them over the years, I have become intrigued by the theme of music-making as an engaging activity to incorporate into a pastoral picture. The tonal aspects of music and painting can be analogous to the emotional content of the landscape. This was explored by the great Venetian colorists, Giorgione and Titian, but developed further by Claude and Poussin. More recently it was sustained by the Symbolist notion of landscape as an état d’âme, particularly as realized in the work of Puvis de Chavannes, Maurice Denis, and Bonnard.
Most of the landscapes on this web site were painted in Highland Park in Rochester, New York, close to where I live. I am delighted that Highland Park and Mount Hope Cemetery were designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, whose work on Central Park in Manhattan and Prospect Park in Brooklyn inspired my first attempts at urban landscapes while I was a student in New York City. In painting figures in urban landscape settings, I am exploring relationships, among people, between people and nature, and between both and their Creator.
“God has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men, yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” Ecclesiastes 3:11