|
|
|---|
My paintings reflect my passion for nature and a desire to tell story with images from my personal experiences around the world. As an art teacher, active waterman, and artist, the purpose of my artwork is to share with others, my diverse experiences with nature and cultures I have encountered throughout my travels. It is this passion for natural phenomena that prompted my trip to Nova Scotia and Niagara Falls during the summer of 2005. Standing on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls was reminiscent of Frederic Edwin Church’s early works and will certainly be an inspiration to future paintings. Whether driving through the Cabot Trail in Nova Scotia or swinging from a zip line in the rain forests of Costa Rica, I have witnessed some of the most breathtaking landscapes one could ever hope for.
More recently my wife and I visited the Grenadine Island chain and sailed a beautiful yacht from the Island of St. Vincent to all the Grenadines, where we were dazzled with the Caribbean Blue colors and beautiful people on every island of diverse cultural backgrounds. I created a series of paintings related to this trip and they are also on my web site so that those who wish to go there can do so without getting their feet wet.
In my earlier work, brush painting and airbrush were used for various realistic effects in my paintings. It is the abstract repetition of little marks on canvas that bring out my interpretation of reality. I enjoy the challenge of trying to duplicate reality with little abstractions of color, line, and complex under painting techniques. I model the painting process for my students to show them the effort required to do a complex drawing prior to beginning the actual painting. As I encounter technical or structural problems, in front of my students, I demonstrate how I solve these problems in the process of paint- ing. I tell my students that you must fail to learn what does not work and experiment to find out what does!
My more recent paintings reflect my passion for the study of Aboriginal culture and the making and playing of Yidaki or Didgeridoo, an Aboriginal wind instrument. I am trying desperately to leave my comfort zone with realistic painting and am now painting in a more stylized manner with dot patterns and cross hatched lines. The paintings are still done from photos I have taken on my journeys to places like the Grenadine islands, but the technique combines my identifiable im- ages with Aboriginal dot painting techniques and symbols used in their culture. In this way, I am hoping reinvent myself as an artist and express my feelings about the diverse culture of the Aborigines I met this summer and to tell story as well as they do.
Traveling to destinations such as Australia, the Grenadines, Barbados, Costa Rica, Mexico, Nova Scotia, and other excit- ing places, is the inspiration for my work. On each of these trips, I have kept a journal with photos taken during the adven- ture and share the written and visual story with my viewers.
I have been an art teacher in the Virginia Beach City Public Schools for 31 years and have a Masters In Interdisciplinary Studies and a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, both from Virginia Commonwealth University. My work has been shown in the Contemporary Arts Center of Virginia, Frame Up Gallery, Ocean Art Gallery, The Virginia Beach Boardwalk Show, Tidewater Artists Association exhibits, Teaching Artists exhibitions, and Old Dominion University. I have also had my work exhibited at the Hummingbird Gallery, Monteverde, Costa Rica and the Rainforest Alliance headquarters in Manhat- tan, New York. I have also been published twice in the Virginia Beach Schools anthology, “A Tapestry Of Knowledge”. My most recent exhibition was a retrospective of my work featuring over twenty paintings at the Oak Grove Methodist Church and gallery in Chesapeake, VA. I also received best in show at the Artist's Gallery shows, "Fresh Paint, New Works", and "Surf's Up" 2010. I received the president's award (best in show) at the Art Institutes jurried exhibition, "Seven Cities Subculture" art exhibit in 2011.
 |
 |
 |
|---|