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If I have learned anything at all from getting my BFA in New York and from intently studying the works of the old and modem masters in America and Europe, it is that style, even subject matter, do not create a masterpiece. It is a painting's presence, power, mystery and perhaps a touch of the sublime, which command a viewer's attention.
Two of my most significant New York teachers drummed this into me. One, a Photorealist, has work at the Metropolitan and Hirschorn Museums and the Carnegie Institute; the other is a Minimalist and has had a Guggenheim Retrospective. So I listened to them.
Two of my most significant New York teachers drummed this into me. One, a Photorealist, has work at the Metropolitan and Hirschorn Museums and the Carnegie Institute; the other is a Minimalist and has had a Guggenheim Retrospective. So I listened to them.
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Various other master/mentor influences, past and present inspire me. Just a few include 17th Century Dutch landscape painter Jacob Van Ruisdael, 19th Century English Romantic painters John Constable and J.M.W. Turner, the 19th Century French Barbizon School, the Post-Impressionist Naturalism painters, as well as Claude Monet, John Singer Sargeant, Joaquin Sorolla and Wolf Kahn, for their light-filled color and brushwork. Internationally renowned contemporary painter Gerhard Richter defies classification by hovering on a threshold between Abstract Expressionism and Romantic Realism, pulling from strengths in both.
During the last few years I have discovered painting and sketching en plein air and have assiduously followed the examples of Richard Schmid, Clyde Aspevig and Scott Christensen, all outstanding plein air painters. At the same time I have also had the privilege of studying with Carl Brenders and Terry Isaac, two of the most respected wildlife artists in the world. Ironically, their photorealistic approach to painting is at the opposite end of the stylistic spectrum from painting en plein air!
During the last few years I have discovered painting and sketching en plein air and have assiduously followed the examples of Richard Schmid, Clyde Aspevig and Scott Christensen, all outstanding plein air painters. At the same time I have also had the privilege of studying with Carl Brenders and Terry Isaac, two of the most respected wildlife artists in the world. Ironically, their photorealistic approach to painting is at the opposite end of the stylistic spectrum from painting en plein air!
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Deriving inspiration from such a diverse company of muses doesn't bother me at all. Their stirring contrasts simply spur on my own quest for a painterly realism that will incorporate the freshness, vigor and life of Plein Air with exquisite, earthy detail that is the hallmark of Photorealism. Hopefully I will find it somewhere between studio and annual autumn migrations from the Denali Highway to the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska. With video, camera, paintbrush/easel/pochade box, chocolate lab and shotgun for bear alert, I search for and record what I find beautiful, from trumpeter swans to colorfully-clad tundra and shimmering kettle ponds, coastal marshes and mists at sunrise and sunset to dripping mosses and lichen that cascade down craggy rock faces of a lagoon.
In the future I hope to be able to venture farther afield on my painting research trips, returning to some of the wilder places of Montana, to the Bosque Del Apache Refuge in New Mexico, whose rich, though subtle, winter burgundies, purples and siennas provide a striking backdrop for the sun-gilded wings of ducks, geese and cranes rising from the waters there and even, perhaps, to the hitherto unexplored beauties of Colorado, Wyoming... And if a potential collector could intrigue me with an inspiring place, image or idea, I would consider the possibility of commissioned work, too.
In the future I hope to be able to venture farther afield on my painting research trips, returning to some of the wilder places of Montana, to the Bosque Del Apache Refuge in New Mexico, whose rich, though subtle, winter burgundies, purples and siennas provide a striking backdrop for the sun-gilded wings of ducks, geese and cranes rising from the waters there and even, perhaps, to the hitherto unexplored beauties of Colorado, Wyoming... And if a potential collector could intrigue me with an inspiring place, image or idea, I would consider the possibility of commissioned work, too.