Over the course of my life, I’ve worn many hats: stunt worker in the film industry, licensed
private detective, security consultant providing protection on yachts and in town cars, roughneck in the oilfields, and an active-duty Navy SEAL with global deployments - including time at the Pentagon. I’ve operated in submarines, conducted combat swimmer operations, skydived into unknown terrain, mingled at black-tie affairs, and slipped through back alleys on surveillance. These experiences - spanning the adrenaline-charged to enigmatic and clandestine - have given me a lens that sees beyond the mundane.
Yet the most daunting challenge I face is standing before a canvas and striving to compose a compelling oil painting - one that draws a viewer in to study the concourse of texture, value, rhythm, depth, design, contrast, and orchestrated color. Painting is revelation, and I dare say, more challenging than the potpouri of other life professions I’ve succeeded in.
Art wise, I work in series, and I dedicate time to academic preparation and process. My goal is
not only to render something visually striking, but to ensure that the final work will be
enduring archivally, and hang for centuries with stoic appeal, subjectively and objectively.
I aim to record beauty, toil, and to portray the consequence of form in space; to personally convey strength, mystery, vulnerability, or even the quiet poetry of decay seemingly frozen in time.
My eye was shaped in a gallery on Cape Cod, where I grew up surrounded by the work of my
parents – both accomplished painters who met at an art workshop. Since discovering my ability
to paint, I’ve been on a continuous path to understand what makes art 'good' – a pursuit I know to be subjective, elusive, and worth sustained, ongoing effort.
One of the reasons I paint is because my father, an immensely gifted Fulbright Scholar, eventually stopped. I also paint because my mother kept at it, but I’m reminded that our talents, if not applied, can fade into silence. Not everyone gets it, but painting is storytelling — it's how I make sense of the visual complexity I encounter in the world. It captivates me, confounds me, and moves me in ways I can’t otherwise express.
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