Here I am, working “en plein air” in the California sunshine…
and in my studio.
About the work
Working from a combination of direct observation, photographs, and memory, I paint landscapes and seascapes inspired by light, movement, and color. I’m less interested in duplicating a scene than in capturing how it felt to be there—the energy, the atmosphere, and the sense of place. The paintings are an invitation to step into the landscape and sometimes, into the sea. My memories of these places are not only about how a they looked but even more about how it felt to be there, the light shifting, the movement of water and/or wind, the emotional resonance of standing within that place. Color plays an important role in conveying that experience. I am drawn to and most often use bright, saturated palettes that amplify the mood and sensations.
You will find that even most of my landscapes include an element water. I know that there are so many people who, like me, need that closeness to water to feel comfortable and whole. If we can’t always be near the sea, a lake or a river, we can have it’s likeness on our walls!
The museum series started one day many years ago when I was visiting the Metropolitan Museum in New York. I walked into a room full of large portraits by John Singer Sargent, one of my very favorite artists. A museum guard was standing with his back turned toward the door I had just entered. He was intently studying one of the paintings. Instantly my camera was at my eye to get a picture of the perfect composition. It later occurred to me that it also had a perfect title. Instead of being a sargent of the guard, he was a “guard of the Sargents”. I just love a good pun!
I loved the painting that resulted from this encounter and began to look for more moments like this where there was some connection between the paintings on the wall and the viewers in front of them. It can be the colors, a hairstyle, the clothing a posture, but always something I find to be in some way meaningful, interesting or just plain fun.
About me
When I was a child I loved to watch my mother paint. She was a watercolorist and it was magical to me to see the pigments flowing in pools of water and watching them come to life, taking on the shapes of hills, trees, buildings, and the human form. I wanted to make that magic too, so she began to teach me what she had learned from some of California’s great regionalists painters, who she had known and studied with.
I began selling my paintings while still a Fine Arts major at the University of California at Berkeley. Over the years my work has been collected by an international clientele and has been commissioned for restaurants, hotels and office buildings, as well as many, many homes.
Next to making art, traveling is the thing I love to do most. This gives me so many wonderful opportunities to be on the lookout for that convergence of circumstance, composition, light, shadow and atmosphere that create a perfect moment. And of course living and working in the San Francisco Bay area, I am also inspired to paint the varied landscapes of this beautiful place I’ve called home for over thirty years.