I started painting in the mid-1990s, mostly because I so loved looking at paintings that I thought it would be marvelous to try making one. The chance to make something beautiful at the end of the day is a gift, a stroke of luck more than genius, I think.

Working primarily in oils, my work almost always draws on something seen, but altered by both accident and design. I do some sketching in watercolor and gouache, but I love the buttery richness of oil and the sense of tradition. The possibility to build up layers, hiding what lies beneath as a sort of secret source, always draws me back to it.

Today many of the images and compositions are evocative of Italy, though not necessarily in any representative way. It’s a place where I’ve spent much of my life, and where I’m most at home—the look and feel of the place, the language, the food and the people who cook it, the grapes and the people who grow them, the voices and music I hear, the sound and smell of the sea almost everywhere. Images and juxtapositions come from a word or phrase that I can’t get out of my head, from objects that catch my eye and won’t let go.

I’m drawn to painters who use color and shape to convey feelings and ideas, challenged to represent depth and meaning in the flatness of a two-dimensional medium. Richard Diebenkorn, Helen Frankenthaler, Alice Neel, and many others are favorites.

A Minnesota native, I lived in Chicago for 25 years where I began painting, studying
at Lill Street Studios, then moving to a shared studio space in the Ravenswood
neighborhood. I still spend as much time as I can in Italy, with frequent return trips
to places that have adopted me, small towns in Liguria and Puglia, the cities of
Naples and Palermo. Currently living and working in  Minneapolis, I’ve had a studio in
the NE Minneapolis Arts District since 2020 and recently moved to new space in the
Kickernick Building in Minneapolis’ warehouse district.