Current Meanderings
“With my artistic practice, it is a delicate balance between striving for cohesion while also following an instinctual spontaneity. Above all, I want my work to mirror my true inner state which is that of continual curiosity. So I follow my nose.”
Fall 2025 - Stained Glass in Chartres Cathedral
I found a book of wonderful close-ups of all the panels of the stained glass windows of Chartres Cathedral in France. This has always been a place of special significance to me. Having had the opportunity to visit the place, the entire site is a work of art, the work of forgotten artists and craftsmen who expressed such honest and imaginative forms of medieval life. The vivacity of the figures represented in the sculptures and the windows baffles me. How are they able to create such life and movement with so little? This is something I wanted to explore in my own work. I wanted to attempt an oil painting in the manner in which a stained glass window operates, the light coming from within.
Paintings: The Legend of Charlemagne, Chartres Stained Glass Study in Oil Paint, 36×36” - The Creation of Adam, Chartres Stained Glass Study in Oil Paint, 36×36”
Photos: Chartres Cathedral Interior.
Fall 2025 - Studying the Life of the Pond
Fish - A Selection of Sketches
Ducks - A Selection of Sketches
The Motif - A Selection of Oil Paintings
I had walked by this pond in the nearby park for five years before I really began to take notice of it. That is often how it goes with motifs. All of a sudden you see something new in a place where you hadn’t much thought anything of. Initially, I wanted to see if I could paint the fish in the water, to render the sensation of looking into the pond without any real definition on where the surface begins or what is the bottom—things like that which I had never attempted to paint before. I began by just drawing the fish repeatedly in their quick movements. That led me to drawing their neighbors, the ducks, who defined the pond just as much as the fish. The character of every animal began to reveal itself. Each was unique and had a certain vivacity.
I was beginning to pick up on something new. This exercise of drawing animals from life requires rapid memory capture and throwing down onto the drawing what were the essential forms and lineations that were observed in that one instant of a fish swishing its tail, or the quick flutter of a ducks wings. How to draw that? How to paint that? This was my pursuit.
December - Mountain Session
I live in a town which has a very artistically celebrated mountain as its backdrop. I sometimes have difficulty painting a motif which has so much tied to it. I think too much of how it should be depicted or how he did it. But every so often when I am lucky, my mind is not trapped by such thoughts and I can just paint this motif as if it were just me and a mountain. In fact, that is all it really is. So once in a while, I can paint an honest account of my experience here in the shadow of the mountain.
January - Patagonia
In January I was very lucky to take part in a unique form of an artist residency, being the accompanying artist on a backpacking trip with Chulengo Expeditions in Patagonia, Chile. I spent three weeks in the Aysen region building up a body of work. For the first portion, I was in the backcountry teaching watercolor as well as creating my own sketch journal. the second portion of my residency was along the shores of Lago General Carrera where I worked in oil paint. I would use this work created here as references for painting larger compositions later in the studio.
Winter City Practice
Aix-en-Provence, France is my hometown. In the winter the trees have no leaves. Without the distraction of the green foliage, in these months I am really able to feel the relationship between the bright blue sky and the warm yellow stones of the town’s buildings. It is a frighteningly difficult thing to try and paint, but every once in a while I go out into the streets to study the play of light and shadow in the canyons of the streets. For practice, I did a study of one of Monet’s Paris motifs.
March - Atlanta Zoo
I went to Atlanta to lead some painting workshops at the Oakland Cemetery. While in the city, I decided to take some time at the zoo and create some work from the animals. This is somewhat of an extension of my work from the duck pond. Here, I am studying each of the immensely particular forms of the wildlife, how they move and exist in their world (or in this case a created habitat). I studied the animals for several days, coming back again and again to the same enclosures to try and capture what was going on. I also brought watercolors to capture the color harmony of the animals so that I might use all this as reference to create work in the studio. This experience of prolonged interaction with the animals was a moving one. It was not simply that you notice more of their presence, but they also begin to notice you. To stay with these animals for prolonged periods and visually engage, the animals tend to eventually return the attention, and they have a way of expressing themselves that one might miss as the casual observer. This was all a pretext for a greater project to come.
Late Spring - Studio Work
Currently I am attempting to create larger compositions based off sketches from my previous travels and experiences. Here are just two works of hopefully a much bigger series to come.
