The Early Works

Pan Am  24" x 20"

As a teenager I worked on single paintings until they were finished.  These works, with the exception of 'Dante's Condominium', were painted during those early years, prior to any formal art education.  Having spent so many years learning to paint as I was taught by others, I must now begin the process of unraveling the twine, and unknotting the binds which limit my approach to painting. This to be sure that all the painted visions are my own.  I dream of one day returning to these motifs, to imagine far away places and to bring them to life.

Armageddon     24" x 20"

At various times in my past I have embraced religion.   The struggle to reconcile the intuition of dreams with the sometimes bizarre logic I experienced in religious thinking has led me, as it has many others, to a better understanding and appreciation for the metaphor.   There is much to say about the nature of metaphorical reality, but perhaps another time.  This painting began as an experiment in the use of paint based on techniques popularized by Roger Dean.  Roger is known for illustrating many of the YES record albums.

Keeping Up with the Joneses   24" x 36"

More Roger Dean influence.  I enjoyed working with spaces as I sensed them in my mind.  These are the kinds of things I and my friends would dream up during meditation episodes.  The young girl is rendered from a photo of my older sister, who has since married an artist, an origami master.   She has recently returned to the pursuit of her own long neglected art interests.

Neptune  20" x 16"

For you hard-core Frank Frazetta fans, I'm sure you will recognize this genre.  Rarely, if ever, have I copied the work of another artist.  Frazetta's ideas were worth investigation. Nufsaid.

Dante's Condominium   51" x 61"

This is a slightly later painting, dating to my undergraduate period.  You can probably read the influence of several artists here, from Matisse and Picasso to Modigliani and Rousou.  In the end, however, it is my own creation.  This is where I began using large hog's hair bristle brushes.

A Night Beneath the Light of Saturn  24" x 20"

This is a wonderful example of the somewhat organic direction in which I try to lead my paintings. This was my first oil painting, begun in high school. It received my attention for several years afterward, during which time I modified the foreground atmospheric effects (sfumato), and enhanced the cloudy surface of Saturn with the cellular formations as seen in the photographs of Jupiter then being returned to us by the Pioneer spacecraft. In reality, Saturn is far more serene than I have depicted it. Nevertheless, if Arthur C. Clarke can place his monolith on a moon of Saturn so that Stanley Kubrick can later move it into an orbit around Jupiter, then perhaps the mixture of planets here is justified. Then again, in a far, far distant future, in the warmer years of the sun yet to come, the environs of Saturn may not only become hospitable, but the new, brighter sun may drive winds fresh across the face of the great ringed planet. What was once cold and distant could become our only refuge. 

A framed version of this painting can be seen in the Slideshow of Recent Work.