Artists

I work with Acrylic paints and gouache. I used bright colors on canvases. I’ve been creating since I was seven years old but started painting in 2019. I’ve sold my art at places before but I want to try Gallery night. For my tent, I get three tables and stands for canvases and place them around the table. I also set up a nice piece on two of my big easels that I have in the front.

Art & Style

People intrigue me. I like to capture the psychological underpinnings of humans, animals too. Animals have a spirit, a divine intelligence that one can interpret from gazing into their eyes or carefully studying their behavior. My creative process begins with a flash of inspiration: I see something that captures my interest or makes me wonder. I then begin to imagine the figures and their placement on the substrate, highlighting relationships between and among the figures and objects. But, when I start a drawing or painting, it’s not all worked out. I begin with maybe two figures, their proportions, and their placement on the canvas. As I start to paint, I gain insight into certain relationships that may have been hidden at the outset. So things change. I also may intend to paint a pink sky, but when that doesn’t feel right, change to greyscale. My focus is on the gestalt of a piece. I want to move people with my work, whether to sadness or joy or to some other impression that deepens understanding. I consider myself a surrealist portrait painter.

Artist Bio

I was raised in Clarence, New York. Clarence in the 70s was rural, mostly farmland and an expanse of woods. I would find a quiet nook, perhaps under a tree, and inspect nature-leaves and their veiny protrusions, ants building mounds of dirt, dappled sunlight. And I drew…at home, in the lunchroom, on the schoolbus. Years later, after graduating from Clarence Central Senior High School, I began schooling at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. I completed my degree at the State University of New York at Buffalo where I graduated in May of 1993 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. Soon after college, I stopped drawing. Twenty odd years later, I began to paint portraits in oil. My first portrait was crude but there was something about it that ignited me. A lifeline is a rope or line that someone can hang onto for rescue or safety. That’s what art became for me. It tethered me to the world, allowing me to make sense of my experience. That understanding helped me move in the world with more fluidity, fine tuning my movements with increased confidence and consciousness.