I have been painting for, give or take... 50+ years. It began while I was in the U.S. Navy and stationed in Norfolk, Virginia. It really accelerated, however, in 1962 when I began graduate work at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. In a painting seminar I was challenged by my instructor to find meaningful subject matter for my work, something to which I had a connection and experience. It was to be the great marshes of the Hackensack River estuary that I traveled through every day, to and from my first job in Elizabeth, New Jersey.
I saw the marshes in sun, snow, flood, storms, seasonal changes .....and at night. I began by making horizontal works with bands of color suggesting the marsh grasses and the sky with the changes of the seasons as my guide. Later I introduced actual fragments of marsh grasses as a collage material. In yet another seminar, this time at New York University, my instructor pushed me further to find materials that had relevance to me. In the district where I then worked, (Bergenfield, NJ.) clay was shipped to us in 50 lb. cardboard cylinders with the ends capped in circles of wood. These were removed and stored, too nice to discard. l chose a couple, brought them home, cleaned the surfaces and began drawing on them with colored inks and stains. My instructor encouraged me to keep working. The first images were a bit fanciful but then the horizontal bands created by the joining of the wood brought landscapes back into the work.
I liked the round format, so I transferred it to canvas and began what was to become my life's work, a square format with a circular shape in the center. Later I began a series of collages on those wooden clay bottoms using a variety of materials including found objects, pieces of rusting iron, seeds, and even soil from as far afield as Siena in Italy. Also incorporated were pieces of intaglio colored prints that I had amassed in printmaking studies. More recently I have been working on paper with water media - transparent water colors with some areas in an opaque medium. The subject matter goes right back to my first work. Now I am working in an oval format, while not forgetting the circle.
I was Director of Art for Bergenfield, a suburban New Jersey, seven school district for 25 years, a teacher of art for 31 years. I had total program and instructional responsibility for the district's art programs. I have had my paintings and prints shown in galleries and exhibitions in the greater New York and New Jersey region from the 1960s through the 1990s often in conjunction with the Painting Affiliates of the Art Center of Northern New Jersey. These have included the Newark Museum, the New Jersey State Museum in Trenton, Vodra Hall Gallery at Jersey City State College, Monmouth County Community College, Silvermine (CT), The Morristown Museum, Lever House in NYC, and the Public Library in Bergenfield. More recently I have exhibited in several locations near where I now live, on Cape Cod.
In March of 2015 I had solo exhibit at The Cape Cod National Seashore Visitor's Center Salt Pond Gallery, followed in April 2016 by an exhibit at The Cultural Center of Cape Cod where my work was shown in "The Vault", with another solo exhibit at The Craine Gallery of Snow Library in Orleans, MA in December 2016. I also had work shown at the Easton Art Museum in Maryland.
I saw the marshes in sun, snow, flood, storms, seasonal changes .....and at night. I began by making horizontal works with bands of color suggesting the marsh grasses and the sky with the changes of the seasons as my guide. Later I introduced actual fragments of marsh grasses as a collage material. In yet another seminar, this time at New York University, my instructor pushed me further to find materials that had relevance to me. In the district where I then worked, (Bergenfield, NJ.) clay was shipped to us in 50 lb. cardboard cylinders with the ends capped in circles of wood. These were removed and stored, too nice to discard. l chose a couple, brought them home, cleaned the surfaces and began drawing on them with colored inks and stains. My instructor encouraged me to keep working. The first images were a bit fanciful but then the horizontal bands created by the joining of the wood brought landscapes back into the work.
I liked the round format, so I transferred it to canvas and began what was to become my life's work, a square format with a circular shape in the center. Later I began a series of collages on those wooden clay bottoms using a variety of materials including found objects, pieces of rusting iron, seeds, and even soil from as far afield as Siena in Italy. Also incorporated were pieces of intaglio colored prints that I had amassed in printmaking studies. More recently I have been working on paper with water media - transparent water colors with some areas in an opaque medium. The subject matter goes right back to my first work. Now I am working in an oval format, while not forgetting the circle.
I was Director of Art for Bergenfield, a suburban New Jersey, seven school district for 25 years, a teacher of art for 31 years. I had total program and instructional responsibility for the district's art programs. I have had my paintings and prints shown in galleries and exhibitions in the greater New York and New Jersey region from the 1960s through the 1990s often in conjunction with the Painting Affiliates of the Art Center of Northern New Jersey. These have included the Newark Museum, the New Jersey State Museum in Trenton, Vodra Hall Gallery at Jersey City State College, Monmouth County Community College, Silvermine (CT), The Morristown Museum, Lever House in NYC, and the Public Library in Bergenfield. More recently I have exhibited in several locations near where I now live, on Cape Cod.
In March of 2015 I had solo exhibit at The Cape Cod National Seashore Visitor's Center Salt Pond Gallery, followed in April 2016 by an exhibit at The Cultural Center of Cape Cod where my work was shown in "The Vault", with another solo exhibit at The Craine Gallery of Snow Library in Orleans, MA in December 2016. I also had work shown at the Easton Art Museum in Maryland.