I was born in 1958, in N.Y.C. I have always drawn in earnest. When I was home sick at the age of 5 for a year, all I could do was draw and glance at the atlas, always drawn to the page on Maine. I decided then that I would become a painter and live in Maine.
I began going to a private art school in 1968, where I learned to paint with oils. I went on to The H.S. of Art & Design for 4 years. N.Y.C. was a great place to be for a learning painter.
Being a Student at A & D meant free passes to all the art museums in the city. The MOMA, the Met, the Guggenheim, Whitney, Frick Collection, and the Pierpont Morgan Library. I went to a different museum every day after school, and then I‘d start all over again. Those paintings were some of my best friends, my favorite place in the city being MOMA‘s water lily room of Monet’s. I fell in love with flowers in that room.
After that I spent a year at The Academy of Art College in San Francisco, CA, then on to Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, N.Y. for another year. I have been painting on my own ever since.
Over the span of my life my most painted subject has been, and remains, flowers. In 1987 I moved to Maine and built a garden and began to grow the flowers I paint, as a way of getting to know them better. From 1986 through 2000 my medium was woven tapestries, the subject still flowers. I returned to paint in 2001.
Most of my flower paintings begin with a seed, bulb, or twig, planting it, watching it grow, sometimes waiting years for a flower, and then more until the one to paint reveals itself, always studying it. Then come the sketches, simple, then detailed, lots of photos, size estimates, stretching and priming canvas, until finally I draw it , and then the paint begins to flow. The glazes begin, sometimes a year or two passes between the first glaze and the last, with many in between, and times for drying.
I work on many pieces at once, glazing one while the others dry, switching canvases on my easel, setting aside the wet ones to focus on another. Shifting the pieces out of the loop as they become finished. There is never that awful moment of the empty easel in my studio.
As a respite from slow time at the easel, I go out plein air painting for a break. (Plein air painting means painting in place what’s before you out in the plain air, which is often full of black flies…). Sometimes (when the flies are too bad) I just take photos and work alla prima back in the studio. (Alla prima means all in one sitting.)
