Watercolor has been foundational to my practice. My grandfather was a painter when I was a child. The first watercolor paints that I had were a gift from him; 5 ml tubes of Winsor & Newton. Whenever he traveled he would buy paint for himself and also get me the same set. 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 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 draw imagined landscapes, my fantasies.

When I returned to watercolors many years later I began doing landscape studies. I was traveling, new places, new faces, new scenes were inspiring to me.

Then I moved to New York. I had no space in my tiny apartment. I saw another artist showing tiny paintings at a small gallery and thought that it was a great idea.

I began with imagined and remembered landscapes. Abstracted forms with perspective tricks and shapes to approximate a landscape, to give the impression and feeling of depth and space in as small a space as was practicable.

I would constantly be sketching any interesting composition I would find, or would take a photo if I didn’t have time in the moment to draw it and then work on the finished piece back at my home studio.

I began showing these works at Bushwick Open Studios in 2017 and have works from this continuing series as recently at the Other Art Fair in 2023.