Landscape painting and looking at physical nature.

I am a painter pursuing two bodies of work: paintings of Landscape within the realm of observation and another separate body of paintings utilizing motifs I borrow from Indian and Persian art history. The Landscape paintings are rooted in observation and descriptiveness and based on the physical world around me.

The Indian/Persian referenced work is not observational but intuitively driven based on many impressions. This work borrows from 17th – 19th century Indian and Persian art history and has at its core a host of collected impressions and experiences based on traveling over several journeys to India.

For me these two very different painting pursuits give me a balanced arena that truly reflects the full scope of my
thinking and life.

Out in the landscape my attention is focused on sections of landscape intensely observed and later developed into paintings in my studio. The delicate 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 that comes out of years of serious drawing 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 one's vision. For me there can be a visceral urge to be the landscape, be the color in the landscape.

I embrace the sublime beauty of pure nature and its sometimes radiating stillness. The immediate "presence" of a particular site is pursued. Though I am seeking an authentic experience in the painting, I prefer to create my landscape paintings away from the site relying on watercolor studies and/or drawings and taking photographs. Working in the studio 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.