9276907

See my art...click here!!!

I was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. I began painting as an adult (as Paul Gauguin did) and I am basically a self-taught artist (I do not have a formal art education). I have taken only two basic art classes, a beginning drawing class and a beginning painting class in the continuing education department at Otis/Parsons. I give a tremendous amount of credit to my teacher, Clyde Semler (who taught both classes). He saw that I had something inside me and helped to draw it out (pun intended).

I started off painting still lives and landscapes. I thought that these genres would be the best to pursue as a potential body of work to sell. I also enjoy painting the figure and portraiture and thought I would do that on the side (I have always been fascinated by the female form and see it as the epitome of beauty). I gradually discovered that people were drawn (another pun intended) to my figure work much more so than my still lives and landscapes. It became apparent to me that I should pursue the portraiture and figurative works wholeheartedly as my enthusiasm for the subject matter was manifest in the work. One important aspect of my work has evolved into an exploration of a strange dichotomy found in this society: the wanton acceptance of violence versus the censorship of the human body in its natural state (nude).

My family has always been in the arts - my mother painted, my grandmother painted, my father wrote, my uncle sculpted and many other relatives are involved in the creative arts. I didn’t really do much art as a child. It never occurred to me that that would be something that would hold my interest. I thought I would be a race car driver or a scientist when I grew up. As an adult, when I took that drawing class on a lark, it seemed as if a dim light inside me began to grow brighter. As I continued on in the painting class and beyond, it began to shine. It was as if something that was always inside of me was finally growing.

The times I have taken a hiatus from painting have helped me understand the meaning of art in my life. At one point I had stopped painting temporarily to deal with some personal matters, and after a couple of months, I began to feel uneasy. Nothing I could really put my finger on, just something did not feel right. This went away when I went back to my art. Some years later, I had to take another hiatus from art and this time, when I was hit with the same feeling, I realized that art was an integral part of my life.

I paint from life. There is something that is very important about having a real person sitting for a painting. I have tried painting from a photograph in the past and it just not the same. The light is flat. When there is a human being across from me, light flows around the person. I feel the presence of the person. It imbues the painting with a spark of life from the individual who is there. It makes the picture much more real.

I have been influenced by many artists, among them Klimt, Dali, Van Gogh, Magritte, Picasso, and Lucian Freud. One of my strongest influences is Egon Schiele. I have always admired the emotion in Schiele’s paintings. One of the greatest accolades I have received is having someone say that my work reminds them of Egon Schiele’s.

My work has been seen in a myriad of venues and has even been used in a movie. I find it a great compliment that, even though I am a man, my art work was chosen to represent the work of a female erotic artist in the movie “Click: For the Love of the Click”.

I have exhibited in many local and national galleries, from Los Angeles, California to Las Vegas, Nevada to New York City, New York. I have two pieces in the permanent collection of the Museu de l' Erotica in Barcelona, Spain.

See my art...click here!!!