Crown of Straw Painting

Painting to escape and explore. I choose subjects that can be rendered into bold forms, shapes and feelings – like Matisse. Some of this intent comes from a painful place in my life during the trying times imposed on my family during my first wife's fight against cancer. Early on I chose bovines as my subject. Attracted to their odd, carnal and inevitable meat state similar in style to a Francis Bacon painting. The unusual and bulky physical form of cows and bulls allowed me to explore the parallels between them and my wife's ravaged and disease body. Today, my artistic guide and muse centers on my continued discovery of the evolving human experience via the state of our place in a rapidly changing world – studies of our environment, possessions, time and memories - all that can be changed and altered in a blink of an eye. The fluidity of paint allows me to best depict our lives in flux.