Canyon View Painting

I was born in a very small town in rural Alberta, Canada surrounded by farm country. I grew up in the cities of Edmonton and Calgary, Alberta but lived most of my adult life in big cities i.e. Toronto, Ontario for 25 years and then moved to New York City and lived there for 14 years. While living in New York I was a professor at Columbia University, Mailman School of Public Health. I was a cancer epidemiologist and while at Columbia I studied the long term health consequences of the Chernobyl nuclear accident. This work gave me the opportunity to study the immense wealth of painting in the present and in the past of all the countries that were included in the former Soviet Union. I took up drawing and painting at the age of 50 when I moved to New York City. Up until that time I was a collector of art purchased in North America, the Middle East and Continental Europe. I began painting with heavy emphasis on idealized abstract landscapes largely inspired by the work of artist Robert Rafailovich Falk whose paintings I had the opportunity to see in my work related travel to the former Soviet Union in the 1990s. More recently my work changed with a re-evaluation of brush strokes and how they accentuate colour and design to create visually appealing forms. The evocative titles of each of my paintings is an important part of the viewer's interpretation of my work. In addition to Robert Rafailovich Falk the other major two artists who have influenced my work are Nicky Orbach (drawing) and especially Ronnie Landfield (abstract impressionism) both of whom were (and in Ronnie's case up to the present time) instructors at the Art Students League of New York City which I attended every year I lived in NYC and continue to attend when traveling frequently back to NYC. My work is all about colour, lots of it, and the genesis of this is partly to do with the solutions I have created to help in the fight successfully against my bi-polar depression, a chronic condition. I have a website for my abstract art work which is: