The landscapes in this portfolio are of Maine, where I live and work. Coming from New York City's tight urban environment, moving to Maine was a revelation. Summer, my introduction was heaven, but then I was almost crushed by the harshness of my first winter. I'd never seen so much snow and ice. Still I was bewitched by the area's openness and easy access to its natural beauty—rolling farmland, vast marshes, rivers, lakes and ocean water, jewel-like, peeking out everywhere, rocky cliffs jutting out into the Atlantic at Casco Bay, open skies and deep green forests. Even with the vagaries of weather—rain, snow, sunshine, hot or cold, it was to me then, and still is, a magical, lush visual feast no matter what the season.

My Goldfish live in a bubble of water separated from me by a glass partition. We live side by side, yet physically our lives couldn't be more different. And for me that's their allure.

Not only are they pleasant to look at, a feast of moving colors slipping over one another, form moving through form, but as they live their exotic lives, watching them, I can encounter the mysteries of their lives every day.

Watching them in their alien universe mine is expanded too. Their experience, so foreign, is one I can only imagine, yet they invite me to try.

Painting a still life lets me spend time looking at things I like—shinny glass objects, colorful patterned fabrics, flowers, vegetables, fruits, plants—whatever strikes my fancy. I get a chance to arrange the small world where they live, placing things where I want them and adjusting the lighting to my specifications. Knowiing they're going to stay put, I can take all the time I need. It's a quiet, relaxed world with no other demands other than what I've imposed on it myself. Here I can ask my own questions, solve my own puzzles, investigate freely and calmly, and enjoy the process of looking, transforming and translating what I see into paint.

While working as a painter these past thirty years or so, I've had a dual career as a lettering artist working for corporate clients, advertising agencies and private individuals. Painting and hand-crafted lettering has occupied my life, each influencing the other in countless ways I'm probably too close to fully explain. Though I can easily recognize my sense of craftsmanship, love of structual integrity and gesture as positive crossovers, back and forth, one to the other. I also know lettering has been a valuable discipline teaching me, among other things, how to recognize and produce a good balanced form, how to organize a variety of complicated images into a whole design, and how to appreciate the relationship between the tool and the mark—a very basic and important concept for any artist.

In this portfolio I've included a variety of lettering projects I've completed, each originating from my own hand using one tool—a pen or a brush, and specifically made for clients who, using words as their own art form, wanted to go beyond what typography could offer. Although I'm painting more now than working with letters, I still welcome the occasional lettering project. If you have something in mind you think I can help you with, let me know.