My years of study in the architecture department at Georgia Tech instilled in me a love for classical design and proportion. However, having been born and reared in the deep South, I am by nature an incorrigible romantic. This apparent dichotomy of classicism and romanticism seems natural to me since I am convinced that true classicists are the ultimate romantics. When I was awarded a scholarship to study art in Italy with Albert Christ-Janer, I encountered first-hand the work of the Renaissance masters. The artwork I created in Italy was exhibited in museums such as the High Museum of Art and was selected by the prominent art critic, Clement Greenberg, for inclusioin in a national exhibition of drawings. After receiving a Master of Visual Arts degree in painting and drawing from Georgia State University, I leased an apartment in Manhattan and attended figure drawing classes at the Art Students' League of New York. I also studied with Philip Pearlstein, one of America's foremost realist figure painters. After teaching art at several colleges I established a studio in Atlanta where I am now a full-time artist. I have received numerous awards including three grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and election to membership in the Salmagundi Club and the American Artists' Professional League. In addition to many prestigious corporate and private collections, my work is in more than a dozen public collections including the Georgia Museum of Art, the Albany Museum of Art, the Morris Museum of Art, the Georgia Council for the Arts, and the Louisiana State Museum. Additional information is available in Who's Who in American Art.
My use of idyllic models is a continuation of art traditions passed down to us from the ancient Greeks and the artists of the Renaissance. Unlike Pearlstein and other contemporary American realists who portray individuals with all their imperfections, I choose models that inspire me to create images that embody my aesthetic sense of the ideal. I am not interested in merely recording the figure as it appears. Capturing a mood in the drawing or painting is worth far more than exactness in delineation of the subject. Whether I am drawing a figure or painting a landscape plein-aire, I don't restrict myself to imitating the subject. Instead, I arrange the shapes, values and hues to create an image that conveys a feeling.
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