As a second year student at Queens College in New York City, I was awarded a summer scholarship to Boston University’s Tangelwood program. A year later in the summer of 1971 I was awarded a scholarship to the Skowhegan School in Maine. It was the first supportive pluralistic creative community of artists I had shared in and was a formative experience. A friend I made that summer and I formed an apartment painting contracting crew and we supported ourselves in NYC that way for the next few years. What was it to move a red or blue on the canvas an inch or two when you were moving walls and painting ceilings high gloss pink. I then spent three years fishing in Montauk to take a break from life in Manhattan but continued my artistic efforts and worked on Robert Wilson productions and with others at The Kitchen in winters when it was too rough to fish. This going to sea greatly influenced my work to this day. By 1978 I was having my first one-person exhibit with the Julian Pretto Gallery in what is now Tribeca, NYC.  Julian provided a wonderful atmosphere in which to enter the art world. His block-thru building sized space attracted prominent artists and critics and I received my first review by John Russell in the New York Times and met many of my peers.

Julian closed in 1979 and I had my first one-person exhibit with Max Protetch in that same year. I continued to show with Max and was awarded both a CAPS grant and an Emerging Artists grant from the NEA in 1980 followed by a full NEA in 1983.  In 1980 I was also invited to become an Instructor of Painting at the School of Visual Arts in NYC.

I was able to give my partners in the contracting business notice in 1979 but the success with Max Protetch created professional pressures to produce that I found destructive. In 1984, after two successful one person shows with Max and numerous group shows, I decided to withdraw from the market place. After four years of working without the demand to finish things, and allowing my art to mature, I joined the Pamela Auchincloss Gallery of NYC in 1988. Over the next eight years I had four one-person exhibits there and established a creative pace that suited me. There were numerous reviews of my work, invitations to guest teach at universities and I became a full- fledged member of the artistic community. I was asked to write recommendations for fellow artists for grants, students sought me out to help them secure scholarships and I was able to help my peers in their careers. I guest taught at Ohio State University, Columbia, and the New York Studio School as well as other institutions. 

The changing market and family demands caused Pamela Auchincloss to alter the nature of her operation in 1996 and I took that opportunity to once again withdraw from showing. My wife, documentary film- maker Beverly Peterson, and I became foster parents to children with Aids and we adopted an eight year old boy named Andre’ in 1995. Working and living with HIV positive children under great stress brought a terrible beauty into our lives and enriched and informed my work.

With Andre’ in our home I gravitated to an art more accessible to him and his friends and family that came to visit. Actual portraits emerged and we collaborated on several paintings. Andre’ passed away in 1996. I had been diagnosed with Hepatitis C in 1994 and found my productivity was falling and in 2000 I successfully completed the difficult treatment. A Pollock-Krasner grant was a great help. I was just returning to the studio again when the disaster of 9/11 struck. We were living one block north of the Trade Center and it was months before I could return to our home and studio. A Gottlieb and a NYFA award greatly helped in my recovery from the WTC disaster. My own life threatening disease, Andre’s passing along with my Dad’s and the WTC bombing changed my outlook on my career. I was now just looking to work and make a life for myself beyond showing and the art world.

My wife and I decided to leave lower Manhattan in 2004 and move to Staten Island. There was no longer any “there” there in Tribeca (Trisurbia) and life had become too expensive and our health was suffering from the proximity to the Trade Center site. Living downtown for nearly 30 years, I had evolved a vocabulary that included the architectural drama of that narrowed part of the Island between the Rivers. This vocabulary enabled me to bring the events that reshaped life in Tribeca into my work. My decision to abandon Tribeca, make the "Crossing" and adopt the surprising environment of Staten Island further informed and enriched my art. After one year on S.I. I was awarded a COAHSI Grant and found a lively supportive creative community here. I had two showings of my work in the Project Room at The Painting Center in 2005-06 that focused on that transition and a show here on S.I. at Wagner College as part of the COAHSI award program.

It has been an exciting time these past few years since moving to Staten Island. As I allow myself to explore the full range of my artistic history, I have access to my works’ original content with a deepened understanding of how these images can continue to speak for me in paint. As a mature artist I find I have this large vocabulary to draw from. Imagery found a decade ago but never fully realized is now available. I have also found the ability to speak to everyday experiences tell stories and paint about current events that is liberating. Even art history looks different to me as I see my concerns expressed in a whole new set of artists and even old ‘friends’ offer new gifts.

I’ve stated that my paintings are a personal odyssey, a vehicle to carry me forward and find some deeper unity in what is happening in and around me. I hope now too that others may find a shared experience in viewing my work that is more easily accessible. I believe the making of a painting needs that moment of epiphany and a trace of how the imagery conveyed thru paint was discovered and experienced by the artist. Not a graphic notation of the language of experience but the mystery of it.

As I build a body of new work and life has somewhat settled down, I feel encouraged to seek representation and again share my work with the larger artistic community. I’m excited by how well advanced painting students at SVA respond to my work and their desire to reinvigorate painting as a vital means of expression. In August of 2010 I was invited into the John Davis Gallery in Hudson, NY and mounted a successful show in John's noted Carriage House.