MountainThoughts Painting

Santa Fe, New Mexico artist born 06/19/1945 in Lima, Ohio USA. I attended art school at the Central Academy of Art in Cincinnati, Ohio where I studied under the distinguished painter of Western Art, Jackson Grey Story. I worked for 46 years as a commercial artist and illustrator for many Fortune 500 companies, all the while, producing fine art for galleries. As an artist, what I’m most interested in is relationships. In each piece you can see the tension between abstraction and definition, the interesting relationships of my colors, and the balance of light and dark. It’s the intimacies between people, people and animals and animals and animals that fascinate me. The relationships we have with others, with our pets, with the natural environment. My scenes are mostly very specific and it’s not that I want to paint a portrait of Bud and Betty or two horses as much as I want to portray the essence of that moment. Whether they are flirting with each other on the dance floor, frolicking in a field or having a quiet picnic in a field of wildflowers. I’m looking at a deeper level of communication that comes from the body or the atmosphere. That’s why I don’t have faces on most of the people. It’s almost an invitation for the viewer to fill in the details of themselves or their loved ones. Yet there’s also an element of voyeurism to my work. We’ve seen those lovers in the restaurants and festivals. And we’ve seen those dogs on main street and those cows in the fields outside of any town in the world. They are images that made us laugh, or cry, or remember when, or overwhelmed by the beauty on this planet. Collectors of my work touch on differing elements, but each is adamant about what exactly they fell in love with each particular painting. Acrylic paint is my preferred medium for it is particularly suited to achieving the fast impressionistic snapshots of a moment. My characteristic strokes of definition are lines that are elegant and expressive all on their own. It’s almost like a Matisse line drawing washed with full color. I try to achieve flowing images that are inquisitive, explorational, and strike chords of recognition in viewers of my work. You remember the sadness of a similar situation, the echoes of laughter of wrestling with your childhood dog, or the tender nakedness of being with the one you love in a crowd of festival goers.