Landscape painting and looking at physical nature.

I am a painter pursuing two bodies of work. One pursuit is Landscape rooted in observation and descriptiveness and based on the physical world around me.

My other painting pursuit utilizes motifs I reference from Indian and Persian art history.  This latter pursuit becomes a synthesis of my history as an American painter and extensive studies of South Asian art. The Indian/Persian referenced work is not observational but intuitively driven.  At their core, they are based on collected impressions and experiences gathered while traveling on several journeys across India.

Out in the landscape I embrace the sublime beauty of pure nature and it’s sometime radiating stillness. The immediate “presence” of a particular site is pursued. The delicate and transitory aspects associated with changing sunlight especially engage my painting thoughts. Light, as it models and defines the fullness of landscape, introduces both clarity and the sense of remembered experiences.

There is a direct connection between the way I look and respond to landscape. This response emerges out of years of drawing pursuits and the urge to delineate in paint the vast accumulation of shapes, surfaces and colors I see in the landscape. Drawing becomes a kind of tracing of ones vision. For me there can be a visceral urge to be the landscape, be the color in the landscape.

Through I am seeking an authentic experience in the paintings; I prefer to create my landscape paintings away from the site relying on drawings and shot photographs. Working in the studio in this way allows me to concentrate on constructing interesting new paintings.

The paintings are based on coastal and woodland sites in New England as well as Great Britain and Japan. The paintings are included in many museum and public collections including the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge MA; Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Boston MA; Fidelity Management, Boston and worldwide; Federal Reserve Bank of Boston MA and Chicago IL; Met Life, New York City, NY and Citibank headquarters, New York City, NY; plus many private collections.

Paintings referencing Indian/Persian historical motifs.

Since the 1970's the root of my studio painting has been landscape tied to a lifetime of serious drawing. For me, landscape painting has been about looking and then responding within the realm of descriptive painting.

In 2004 I began exploring Indian and Persian art historical motifs as a parallel body of painting. My subject matter comes out of my ever increasing interest in historical Indian painting fostered by several travels across India beginning in 1983 and resuming in 2001.

From the start the Indian art referenced motifs that I pursued seemed to largely originate in my inner thoughts. I was very mindful that this pursuit was intuitively driven by a western artist coming out of European and American landscape and figurative traditions. That is, a western artist looking at South Asia and referencing its art history. From the beginning this was a slow process of sorting through many experiences and visual and psychological impressions that resonated from my travels inside India as well as studies of Rajput, Pahari, Mughal and Persian miniature paintings.

In time, with the reading of contemporary Indian novels, consuming classical and contemporary Indian and Persian music, and especially an intensive focus on a growing collection of Indian drawings (16th c. – 19th c.) the unfolding images for this body of work evolved.

I thank Howard Truelove for mutually sharing many passions in life including art, music and India.

I wish to acknowledge the following museum curators and scholars of Indian and Islamic Art for giving generously of their time and encouragement: Milo Cleveland Beach, Joan Cummins, Dr. Daljeet, Debra Diamond, Eberhard Fischer, Jyotindra Jain, Terry McInerney, Mary McWilliams, Darielle Mason, Kimberly Masteller, John Seyller, Woodman Taylor, Cary Welch, and Joan Wright.