For thirty seven years I’ve been devoted to the use of one phenomenal vehicle in each of my paintings, one that allows me unheard of artistic freedom, Its properties inspire ideas for paintings that require creative solutions, that in their turn become intriguing paintings that range from the humorous to the sublime; from sports to states of being. My vehicle, a TREEHOUSE, has no limitations; therefore since it can naturally adapt to whatever subject I use it to portray, my works can go anywhere, be anything and portray anything I choose.
My greatest influences - -
When I was four years old and my youngest sister was twelve, she decided that when we grew up, it would be wonderfully romantic to have an artist brother starving in an attic. So for the following eight to ten years, she raved about every unfortunate drib and drab of crayon, pencil or paint I put on paper, so that ultimately becoming an artist became my life's passion.
The second influence on my life came from going to a military school in the middle of Penn’s Woods.
Five years earlier at its summer camp, I had discovered that I had a natural affinity for the trees in the hardwood forests that surrounded me. Then in the forests in the area of the school, the feelings I got from the thunderstorms, deep snows and the heavy fogs I experienced there, were also lasting contributors to my need to paint them.
In addition the lack of art classes in that school fostered in me an ongong lust for opportunities and the materials to paint.
My greatest inspiration came from an experimental, therefore almost accidental watercolor I painted one evening in 1973. That painting absolutely required the title “The Fisherman‘s Treehouse.”
Soon I realized that I could use one of those as a vehicle in each of my paintings,forever, because after all, a tree house is a place to play, a place to dream, a place that can be anything its inhabitants want it to be. It’s only limitation is the extent of their imaginations.
What I do
Since 1976, due to the properties inherent in my vehicle, the proverbial tree house, I have been painting my subjects in acrylics on linen canvas, in whatever school or technique that I feel will provoke the response I’m reaching for. But to begin with, I will have already chosen my subject, usually because it’s going to be challenging to interpret in some way, it moves me, or just something about it intrigues me. I also need to feel that the subject will best be portrayed by me using my vehicle in my own way.
I use this vehicle because other than in my plain air landscapes and portraits, being a story teller, my paintings had always been idea rather than technique based. But back then, pre 1973, they tended to look like they had been painted by a lot of different artists. So I had been looking for an out of the box way to identify them as mine. Then because of the already mentioned experimental watercolor, I chose to use what would become my vehicle in always different ways in each of my paintings. And at that point the Treehouse Concept started its evolution.
On choosing my subjects,
I get my inspirations come from almost anything, - - like say - - a comment, a phrase, a word that gets my attention, a passion of mine, an event that has involved me, or it can just be a thought I want to explore. Then once chosen, I envision using my vehicle within the parameters of its concept to portray the subject; and then, usually without any reference material except my imagination or my memories, I start drawing or painting directly on the canvas.
Since 1973 when I first painted the Fisherman's Treehouse, the use of a tree house as a vehicle in any visual art form has been my intellectual property.
