Bio
Born in Newark, New Jersey, where I attended Arts High School, the first high school in the U.S. to focus on music and art. I was fortunate to have instructors there who were highly inspiring, engaging, and influential in conveying ideas involving color, composition, plasticity, and commitment to artmaking. This was followed by 4 years at the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia (including a life-changing 3rd year abroad program in Rome), and then graduate school at Syracuse University. After teaching painting and drawing at an art center in Lake Placid, New York, for 4 years, I moved to Salem, Massachusetts, joining the faculty at a small Boston art school which later became the Department of Art and Design at Suffolk University.
Painting
My art work initially took the form of large realist paintings (oil on canvas) of landscapes and the built environment. These were quiet, contemplative images of clearly contemporary and familiar surroundings, with all elements carefully composed both on the canvas surface and in pictorial space. Recurring subjects were greenhouses and hanging plants, arrangements of chairs of various types and colors (standing in for the human figure), porches, neighborhood streetscapes.
Since1986, I’ve been conveying my environmental concerns through paintings of aerial views of human incursions into forests and arctic landscapes, combining imagination with photographic sources. Many years of working from perception now allows me, with a knowledge of the mechanics of light and space, to augment photographic reference material or to completely invent images as needed.
Photography
I try to make yearly trips to Italy and elsewhere in Europe, satisfying a lifelong interest in European art and culture. My junior year at Tyler Rome has been followed by many return visits. In the photographs from these travels, I work to capture the formal and provocative beauty of European art, architecture, and cityscape, from ancient to modern times, with a focus on Rome and environs, applying the formal skills acquired through painting. My photography practice provides some contrast and relief from the more dire and distressing concerns expressed in my paintings.
Sculpture
My 3-dimentional work consists of assemblages of antique elements collected over the decades, referencing history, religion, ritual, and the human condition.
Awards, Reviews, Collections, Listings
In 2001 I received a Guggenheim Fellowship to rent a small plane to take photographs above the outskirts of the city, where factories and new housing developments are spreading into the countryside, the fabled Roman Campagna. This was (literally) one of the high points of my career and enabled me to gather hundreds of photographs, which I have, since then, been assimilating, into my paintings.
Other awards have included: CAPS Grant from New York State; Trustee Prize, Everson Museum, Syracuse; John Elliot Prize in Painting, Newport Art Museum (1984); Massachusetts Artists Fellowship Grant (1981, 1992, 1996).
My work has been widely exhibited in solo and group shows in the United States and abroad.
Reviews have been included in Art News; The Boston Globe; The Boston Phoenix; New York Times; Art New England; Christian Science Monitor; Sanctuary (Massachusetts Audubon Society , cover).
My paintings are in numerous private and public collections including The Hyde Collection, New York; The DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park; Cabot Corporation; Household Finance Corporation; CVS Pharmaceutical; Boston College Museum of Art; Fidelity Corporation; Credito Valtellinese, Sondrio, Italy.
Reference works and art anthologies include Who’s Who in American Art; American Artists; New American Painting - Northeastern Painters, 1998,2002; Mantle Fielding Dictionary; Biographical Encyclopedia of American Painters, Sculptors & Engravers of the U.S; Aeronautics and Painting, Lundwerg Press, Barcelona; Civil Engineering and Painting, Academia de Bellas Artes Press; 100Boston Painters.
Teaching
I am currently a Professor Emeritus at Suffolk University, Boston. While there, I was able to develop highly comprehensive and effective courses in both Foundation Painting and Foundation ColorTheory, Perception and Application. In 2013 I left teaching to concentrate on my art.
I have a home (built ca. 1850 and lovingly restored) and studio in Beverly, Massachusetts, and a seasonal home in Harpswell, Maine.