Current Works

Why I Paint

I’ve always written; stringing words and sentences together has been my way of preserving experience and making it mine since I was in high school. But there was a moment in my forties when words seemed to fail me. My wife and I were standing on a pier in Monterey, California, and I was overcome by the power of the ocean as it pounded the rocks. I tried to capture the moment, but words seemed insufficient to express what I was seeing. They lacked immediacy, and I couldn’t find language that was graphic and visceral enough to reflect what I felt. When I returned home to Boston, I noticed a large “going out of business” sign in the window of the art store across from my office. I’d never entered the art store; never been interested in painting as an activity or a means of expression. But it struck me that perhaps this was no accident. For about $25 I purchased a few brushes, some Russian watercolor paints, and a pad of paper. At the time, I didn’t know the difference between watercolor and oil, and acrylic was just a word that I associated with nail polish.  Read More