Strangers on a Train
oil on panel

I paint from perception and imagination and draw from personal experiences, from my childhood to life in in Rome, Atlantic City and now New York . My Fulbright to Italy, to study saints and apply their fusion of the neurotic and sublime to portraiture, led to Arcimboldo-inspired 'headworks' or 'criptosanti' with architectural headresses. In recent versions, and other paintings that mix cityscape elements into still lifes (tablescapes), appropriations of Christo, Caravaggio, Freud, Guston, Kahlo, Mantegna, Van Gogh, etc. appear. In Rome I began painting still lifes as visionary cities, a la de Chirico, and eventually placed giant figures in them. I'm interested in blending pop culture with historical gravity, political humor with moody tonality, rich color harmony and complex space.