Watercolor has been foundational to my practice. When I was a kid the first watercolor paints that I had were a gift from my grandfather in 1985: 10.5 ml tubes of Pierrefeu Maxi Tubes. Aquarelle from France. When he passed away in 2019 I found the same set in his collection. It seems he purchased one for himself at the same time and it had been stored in his studio relatively untouched.
By the time I was a teenager I had a wide variety of watercolor cakes, tubes, gouache, brushes and papers. I created my first compositions relying on pictures in magazines for source material. I remember finding stacks of musty National Geographics, boxes of Mad magazines, and issues of LIFE in the neighbor's trash. It was a bonanza.
I painted lighthouses, people, flowers, animals, boats… anything that looked interesting. I was trying for accuracy and spent a good amount of time mixing color, learning how to mimic each tone I encountered as closely as I could. I didn’t like what I saw in my surroundings so I would often draw imagined landscapes pieced together from memories and dreams. I began to illustrate my favorite characters from games and books, it was my childhood obsession.
When I first returned to New York, I had no space in my tiny apartment for a proper studio. I saw another artist showing tiny paintings at a small gallery and thought that it was a great idea. They were very affordable and I figured that If even I had enough wall space to hang such a tiny painting surely anyone would. You could place one almost anywhere. I figured that I would be able to work at this scale.
I began painting at home at night on my coffee table. I had returned to New York City with new eyes after a decade of living in southern states. The city was very inspiring. The sunset views of the city over the BQE were the first views that inspired me. I started with compositions consisting of the low rooftops of North Brooklyn fading into the distance with the rainbowed sky behind it. I used mainly aerial perspective to imply distance and abstracted line to imply the rooftop horizons between each block. I began painting more and more. I used snapshots of any composition that was of interest to me. I painted a few iconic landmarks, but mainly stuck to the smaller streets of my home neighborhoods Williamsburg, Greenpoint and Bushwick, and the places on Long Island I would visit to see family Stony Brook, Fire Island & Oceanside.
Iconic elements began to draw my attention: billboards, radio towers, bridges, water towers, architectural elements, windows, trees, fencing, graffiti, roadways; the city had such a rich texture. I painted hundreds of compositions. I will occasionally lead a group to a location for plein aire, but still will work mainly from photography when commissioned for a landscape.
Around 2009 I began regularly attending figure drawing groups in Brooklyn and settled on the Drink and Draw that met Wednesday nights at 3rd Ward which was free with a membership. This group expanded and contracted over the years. I ran it for a little while during interim periods as the group transitioned from its home at 3rd Ward to Triskellion Dance Studios for a short while, until restarting at Bathaus in Bushwick; and later relocating to its current home in Williamsburg. After over a decade of working with this group and over 12000 watercolor drawings I have developed my own unique style of rapid gestural watercolor capture of the human figure. My style uses a mixed media approach with foundational sketching in pencil; watercolor washes to create form; with ink and oil pastel highlights. This space became my third-space, a home away from home.
I began showing small works at Bushwick Open Studios in 2015 and have shown works from this continuing series as recently at the Other Art Fair in 2023.