Quality Materials

All of my paintings are acrylic on canvas and painted with only professional artist grade light fast paints. While ready made pre-stretched canvases are readily available at any art store, most are poorly constructed with low quality canvas and stretchers. To ensure the quality of my canvases I purchase 10-12 oz. primed canvas rolls and do the extra work of stretching each canvas by hand using only the best heavy duty 1 ¼” x 2” stretcher bars.

My Painting Process

My paintings, with the exception of my figurative abstracts, are pure abstraction. The paintings are begun without the use of sketches or visual references. I begin by first texturizing the canvas with various materials and mediums. Once I am satisfied with the textured effects I begin applying the paint. I enjoy painting with a limited palette of six basic colors. Over the years I have found it easier to produce any colors I need using titanium white, cadmium yellow, cadmium red, burnt sienna, ultramarine blue and mars black. My first layers are generally thin but as the painting progresses I vary the viscosity of the paint depending on the effects I am trying to achieve. Some effects are achieved through glazes and splatters and some through thick applications of paint dragged across a heavily textured area of the painting. I complete the paintings with a coat of gloss varnish that brings out the colors and gives the painting a beautiful polished look.

Why I paint!

I am often asked, what is the inspiration for my paintings? The greatest source of inspiration for my abstract work is simply my love of the materials. I love paint! I absolutely love the experience of seeing what paint can do, what happens when you put one color next to another or apply paint thinly or thickly. My intent is not to totally control the painting experience but to be open to it, to allow the brush, the paints and my ideas to dance together. Therein lies the truly wonderous experience of abstract painting.
For me, every painting I produce is another experience with beauty. I truly believe that recognizing, acknowledging and producing beauty endows you with the ability to love all things. What I try to achieve through paint, color, texture and composition is to transcribe the basic visceral feelings of beauty, love and passion onto a canvas for others, as well as myself, to experience and feel.

My Favorite Quote About Abstract Art

"The painter no longer approaches his easel with an image in his mind; he goes up to it with material in hand to do something to that other piece of material in front of him. The image would be the result of this encounter.
... The apples weren't brushed off the table in order to make room for the perfect relations of space and color. They had to go so that nothing would get in the way of the act of painting."

Harold Rosenberg,
'The American Action Painters,' in The Tradition of The New, N.Y., Horizon Press, 1959. Originally published in Art News, vol 51 no. 8, December 1952.