Like a fine cocktail or a delicious meal, my art is made to delight the senses. It is a celebration, it is joyful and intended to be an enhancement to the viewer’s day.

My work rejects political, ethnic, economic, and social boundaries, it embraces inclusion. It attempts to reach all people by reducing art to the basic elements of form, color, and composition.

My work is influenced by the years I studied under Masao Kinoshita (木下 正夫) who taught me the qualities of Japanese harmony, balance, and restraint. Most importantly, I learned from my friend and mentor to seek “perfection through imperfection”. This concept was at first anathema to my midwestern worldview, but slowly I came to embrace it, to embrace its richness and completeness.

However, while influenced by Eastern traditions my work is not rooted in them. My work is a fusion, grafting the Zen qualities of the East onto my roots in the Abstract Expressionism that dominated the American art scene of my youth.

Additional influences include my university art training, and my time living in the West Indies, where I was surrounded by aqua water, rich flora, and brightly painted shacks.

I am also influenced by my travels in post-iron-curtain Eastern Europe, where newly freed people celebrated by painting gray Solivet-era apartment blocks in bold colors and erecting exuberant architecture.

My art is not meant to convert anyone or to comment on the politics of the day. It, like a delicious bite, a wildflower, or a puffy cloud in a bright blue sky, is intended to bring delight. Life is transient, as is my work, it is meant only to dance for a moment on the retina of your eye and be enjoyed.