A stranger in a strange land, I came to my craft as an artist late in life.

 

Despite my delayed entry as an active participant into the world of creative artistry, art has always stirred my passions as a vehicle for exploration and understanding of the world around us, and for communication between human beings.  An attorney by training and an artist by compulsion, I have spent much of my life intrigued by the ways in which words and images intersect with and reinforce or contradict one another.  As an individual who lived as an immigrant in an alien society at an early age, I also have an intrinsic interest in the fluidity and elasticity of identity, the ambiguities associated with identity, and the prejudices and expectations found within my own community.  I have found it fertile territory for my art.  

 

Working in a variety of media, including oils, watercolors, pastels, digital technology and even stone, my creations reveal a hand that feels linked during moments of chutzpah to the Creative Power in the universe.  Believing that every human being is unique but created in the image of the divine and with a fondness for human imagery, I seek to discover an intense union with my human subjects and attempt to reveal that spark of the divine light with which each of them is infused.  Glorying ultimately in their humanity, I hope that my portraits and the questions they raise will challenge our assumptions about the world around us and, in so doing, assist each of us to connect more intimately with that spark of life so that we all can work together in partnership to repair our very imperfect world.

 

My work has been inspired by the work of artists who challenge viewers to understand a “reality” that may seem to contradict the perceived image or that may contain inherent ambiguities.  My art reflects influences as wide-ranging as Lucian Freud, Man Ray, Edvard Munch, Rafael Soyer, Rene Magritte, Cindy Sherman, Yasumasa Morimura, Constantine Brancusi, Winslow Homer and Valentin Serov. I also point to painters as diverse as Eric Fischl, Robert Henri, Cezanne, Rembrandt and Velasquez as masters who have influenced my work.  

 

While I have no formal academic art training, I have studied with many other artists over the years.  Two stand out.  John Paul Thornton, my first art teacher, will always influence my analytic 

approach to composition and brushwork.  The late Charles Fulmer, with whom I studied stone sculpture while we debated topics as wide ranging as color theory, black powder and Dennis Kucinich, will always be there spiritually leaning over my shoulder whenever I begin another art project.  I always felt honored when Charles would tell me that I was a branch on his artistic tree, a tree whose roots reached back through Hans Burkhardt into art history.

​

I have exhibited my art at a variety of galleries and other venues in Los Angeles over the years, and will always respond to inquiries, proposed collaborations and potential commissions.