My work has gone through different stages of thought and technique starting with an historical perception of the American myth. The early Columbus series was inspired in part by Hart Crane’s “The Bridge” and in part from the years living on and off in the islands of the Caribbean. Works such as “San Salvador”, “The Mission of Diego Mendez”, and “South Sea” are small dark lyrical sea paintings that grew in my 1965 New York show into larger more abstract canvases like “Lewis and Clark”, the civil war rendering of “Missionary Ridge”, and the western expansion in “Long Horn “, and fight for “Civil Rights”. The seventies brought into use the figurative and multiple images of the paintings, “Homage to Emily Dickenson”, the Dylan Thomas inspired “Green and Easy,” and for the beat generation “On The Road”.
In several paintings I asked the viewer to make more difficult relationships of literature and history as in “The Pueblo” and “The Bachelor”. In “The Pueblo,” there is the philosophical quest by paring the image of Commander Bucker, the captain of the ill-fated American Naval ship captured by the North Koreans, the image of John Paul Jones who had “not yet begun to fight” and a nineteenth century seaman in Melville’s tale of “Billy Budd.” The viewer is asked to mingle these concepts of guilt, heroics, and moral decision making and the resulting ambiguity for the characters in the painting. “Bartleby” paired Marilyn Monroe with Melville’s “Bartleby” who chose to” prefer not”. The captain of the ship “The Bachelor’ with it’s partying crew when asked if they had seen Moby Dick said they didn’t believe in him representing that segment of society that doesn’t believe in the mystery of life. These paintings were in the 1976 Bicentennial New York exhibition.
In the late seventies I started experimenting with printmaking; etchings and mostly color linocuts. I made some illustrations for poet friend’s books like Donald Justice and Larry Lieberman and received commissions for some linocut portraits.
In the eighties I received a Miami-Dade County Art in Public Places commission for four paintings for the Bird Drive Park {now Doug Barnes Park) buildings. The architects wanted Florida frontier subject matter to complement the buildings fort style. I went to see the celebrated writer, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, the acknowledged Everglades and Florida scholar, then in her nineties, to ask what I might read for the park commission. The memorable visit produced “Spanish Florida”, “Seminole”, ‘Settlers”, and “Miccosukee”. There grew then a series with Florida subject matter, “Homage to Marjory Stoneman Douglas”, also concentrating on the flora and fauna, “Celtic Mangrove”, Cupressus Disticha”, and concern for wild life, “Roseatte Spoonbills”, “Carretta Carretta” and “Homage to John Ogden” the ornithologist in the Glades who gave me the information on the declining seabirds and our neglect of the environment .
The late nineties brought very detailed works as in “The Biltmore” which takes off on the majestic hotel built in 1926 with its Mediterranean architecture and beautiful tile work, “Biltmore Annex”, and “Biltmore Ballroom” with its hand painted ceilings. In 2000 came “Miami Egrets’ and a South Beach painting, “C’mon Down” a complaint about over development. Then a driving trip in Oct. 2002 up to Maggie Valley in North Carolina’s Smoky Mountains produced four canvases in a loose semi abstract style. This period also produced paintings of Miami’s Spring “Bougainvillea”, then “Golden Shower” and “Poinciana” with its gold and scarlet canopies covering the city. Photos my nephew, a physician in the Navy, sent me from Bagdad with it’s blown up buildings gave me a the painting, “In Iraq” shown in the Boca Raton Museum’s All Florida exhibition in 2010 . “The Spill” of 2011 came out of the Gulf Oil disaster to the environment. Back to the Smokies with “Smokies Morning Mist Rising” in 2012 which was selected for the 62nd Boca Raton Museum “All Florida Competition and Exhibition” in 2013. Some works are sold and some available.