I have been an artist all my life, but I don’t always paint. Life is so colorful and interesting and there are so many things to do and create. In deciding what to explain about myself and my work, I realize that my motivation for painting is to evoke a feeling. I love color and design and the way light moves, but the thing that really draws me to paint is the mood or memory or even the possibility of memory. I suppose I am a romantic, I envision wonderful things going on before or after I’ve captured a scene. This is one reason that the vast majority of my work is portraits. There is so much to see in a face, the life lived, the hope for the life to come. Even animals have an outlook on their life and I enjoy capturing it with paint. There are few portraits in this exhibition because my clients’ homes are scattered throughout the world.

Many of the pieces that I create are done on reclaimed wood, although there are few in this exhibit. I like the feeling of extending and perhaps even elevating the life of a tree that once reached toward the sun.

I have always been fascinated by faces,
human and animal, young and old.
There is so much in a face:
the life one has led,
or the possibilities of a life yet to come.
I strive with each portrait
to capture not only the likeness of the person or companion,
but their personality and experiences as well.
I do not want to merely copy a form, a photograph can do that -
I want to make the life and the spark of each painting leap from the canvas.
Until that happens, the portrait is not complete.
Some portraits are of companions who have passed away
and who live on in a loving gaze and a fondly remembered face.