Artist Statement

To go gently. To leave this earth as I found it. And yet to show that I was here, to leave a mark, to share a bit with humanity — that's my ultimate goal.

Taking what's already here, rearranging, altering a little, is my way of sharing. Sharing my thoughts and feelings about our world; my fears and worries, my hopes, my joys, my prayers.

One of my joys is to look. I love to look at things, So I make things to look at. Mostly two-dimensional things - paintings.

What to paint is the incessant question. The choice is endless — figure, landscape, still-life, abstract, a story. But now I get back to my goal of sharing, and going gently.

I use what's already here, things which are ordinarily discarded, added to our already overabundant waste stream — magazines. I use the images, the text, the color, to break the intimidating blank surface; then I use a little color to enhance, to obliterate, to play.

The result? Something I can look at with joy.

Bio

I’m mostly self-taught. I took a smattering of courses at the Brooklyn Museum, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn College, and the School of Visual Arts. I had the great fortune to learn from many notable artists and designers: painting with Ad Reinhart at Brooklyn College; graphic design with Milton Glaser and Henry Wolf at the School of Visual Arts; figure drawing with Joseph Crivy, and sculpture with Cal Albert at Pratt. 

Further aesthetic development came from my employment as a graphic and product designer at Robert P. Gersin Associates in New York City; freelance graphic work at Frank Ghery’s Office in Los Angeles, and graphic design at the Office of Charles Eames in Venice, California.

Then I had a change of scene, designing toys for Creative Playthings in New Jersey, and my artwork was shown at a group show of new artists in the New Jersey State Museum in Trenton.

Then another change — I moved to Vermont in 1971, where I designed and built furniture and houses and took a sabbatical from painting. In 1986 I went to the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson to work on my furniture designs, and went back the following year to paint and have been painting from that time on.

In 1995 I was invited for a one-month fellowship to Dachau, Germany to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the end of WWII and the liberation of the concentration camp. The fellowship culminated in a major exhibit of the work of invited artists, and the work of local German artists known as Gruppe D.

I have shown work at the New Jersey State Museum in Trenton New Jersey, the Fleming Museum in Burlington, the Chaffee Art Center in Rutland, Stratton Arts Festival, Helen Day Art Center, Dibden Gallery at Johnson State College, Quimby Gallery at Lyndon State College, Mary Bryant Gallery in Jeffersonville, Red Mill Gallery at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Local 64 in Montpelier, and in my hometown of Morrisville at Copley Gallery and the Gallery at River Arts.