L Cafe Painting

I have been an artist all my life, having been inspired to paint by my father's favorite cousin, Lloyd Weninger, who taught stage design and painting at Carnegie Tech, and who taught me the basics of watercolor painting. After achieving a BFA at the Cleveland Institute of Art, I spent 6 months traveling and visiting all the great paintings in Europe. I moved to New York City soon after. Since 1984, I have had an art studio in Long Island City, Queens, NY. I am essentially a figurative painter of the urban scene, somewhat abstracted and expressionistic. New York City has been my main source of inspiration, and figurative art in public spaces has been my focus. I have explored this interest by first, creating a series of figures passing each other, based on sketches around Wall Street and the World Trade Tower interiors. My second major series involved interiors of hotel lobbies, bars and cafes, which encouraged a richer color palette. This then moved into paintings of Times Square that merged reflections on windows with the people behind the glass inside the bars and cafes. In general the feeling in the paintings is one of disconnectedness that I experience between people rather than a description of place in a realist sense. I continue to paint figures in Interior spaces, entitled "Interiors," and to paint figures and reflections, entitled "Outside Looking In."