Artist Statement:
After early years exploring a range of approaches, especially surrealism and expressionism, my work for the past four decades has focused on traditional, though not ‘academic’, realism. I mostly work from the figure, including portraiture, and landscape, primarily in drawing and watercolor. My recent exhibitions have featured portrait sketches and watercolor paintings most of which were done in the French Jura Mountains near the French/Swiss border where my wife, Martine, has half-ownership of an 1838 farmhouse surrounded by countryside that seems little changed since the 19th century.
Whatever the subject matter, I always prefer to work from direct observation rather than photographs, if at all possible. Further, I take few liberties with my subjects, striving to capture with exactitude and sensitivity the qualities that inspire me. In this, making art is less a process of replicating what I see and more an attempt to connect with it.