The evening conference room was half-full of aspiring creative-arts people: the library staff were anxious to close the doors and go home for the day. Wrapping up the session, the man at the front held them all with a steady gaze and exclaimed:
“Let me tell you the very best advice I can give you about presenting your portfolios!… ” Suddenly, you could hear a pin drop.
“Tell your story; describe your journey; explain your mission, but invite the visitors and judges to join you in your travels.
Encourage them to come with you on your trip. Show how you've been investigating and exploring your medium deeply―but do it in a way they will understand and enjoy…”
Some, stared blankly ahead. Others frowned. I held my head in my hands, and a mental gasp rippled through the crowd:
“You mean, we're on a journey?”
“Oh yes. So in your projects show the direction and depth of your artistic explorations.”
And so we begin…

Mountains and mountain ranges create a panorama that is both dramatic and subtly changing from top to bottom and side to side. As we see these scenes through younger eyes, or remember the eyes of our childhood, it's the impressions and memories we recall. My mountain scenes depict colored and scaled expressions of our world that often convey a message.
Over time, my landscapes have evolved to regain the fresh impact I saw earlier in life. I now start my landscapes using a greyscale reference image. I study the real scene, but then set that aside, and reset my view, painting only from a black and white version.
Each underpainting’s colors come from the message and the feel of the scene. With later layers of paint and other pastel mediums, I introduce more of the original scene’s colors into the painting.
As you look through my landscapes project here, travel in time, starting today, and journeying back towards my earlier interpretations.

In this portfolio, most of these paintings were created by painting three mostly complete paintings one on top of another. Few of these pieces were painted simply with one medium, such as “just” PanPastels. As I experimented with different forms of pastel paints, I realized that the greatest strength of pastels as a broad category comes when you blend together the different pastel mediums. Unlike other mediums of paint, pastels are unique in the number of distinct forms you can use: powder, paint stick, pencil.
As the birds around us become bigger and more brightly feathered, their plumage seems to take on a rippling life of its own. The structure of the feathers and the deep shadows between so many of the layers is a challenge for any painting medium. To capture the delicacy of the plumage, I begin with a full painting using PanPastels to color and shape the main elements. I use soft traditional pastel sticks to apply an overcoat of deep pigment that follows the direction of the feathering. The final shaping of the feathers involves pastel pencils to establish the edges of key groups of feathers, blur and darken the shadowed areas, and set the sharp edges for many individual feathers.

In a lovely painting of a single bloom with its touchable soft-edged curving petals―where did that shape come from? In my case, these flowers literally rise from their ashes. The feeling you get from looking at a flower often comes from the color of the flower’s shade, as much as from the natural color of the flower itself. It’s like starting at the back of a flower, and then working towards the light.
I paint flowers by first creating a painting of only the shadows. This is a painting using the shadow colors. Odd, isn’t it, to think that shadows have colors? This provides consistent shade, and pulls together the shadows into a whole shadowed flower―like a color film negative from an old camera. The shadowy areas blend and bleed through each petal to shape them. Darker shadows separate layers of petals.
Crusting and covering each petal, the brightest and lightest areas are added nearly at the end, and blended out towards the edges of the petals. Pastel pencils add the clear curving edges of the petals.
My flowers may be painted backwards, from back to front―but notice I’m always ending on the brightest tones.

This project is about alcohol―denatured alcohol, not the kind for drinking. These still life paintings were all underpainted with alcohol―to create a liquid pastel-paint that was brushed on, and allowed to drip and run. The soft pastels I applied on top do not blend with the background. This produces sharp outlines and stark separation of still life subjects from their surroundings.
In early days, I tired quickly of those seemingly endless studies of classroom still lifes: from dusty plastic apples, to rubber ruby grapes, and on to rotting brown gourds.
But the solution stood out: bring them back to life with color! Is it the “auras” of those lifeless pieces that now return through their paintings? Or just an artist's excitement to enliven our world?
Still life paintings became my excuse to expand my use of high-energy colors, and create eye-catching interest. Since my portfolio has been about a world of color, look through the paintings in this project. When did you last see a purple egg? When was an old empty wine bottle more vibrant than the sun? Perhaps you could give still lifes another breath or two, and liven up your home collection of art.

As the Bard once said:
“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.”
And what was a “breach” anyway?
In fact, it was a hole in your wall. A risky thing to leave uncovered in the days of kings and castles.
But, do you have any breaches around your home?
You’d see them as blank areas on your walls, where a painting would be just the thing to:
enliven your day, cheer up your room, make you reminisce, give you pause for thought...or a thousand reasons more.

Did you discover some pieces on your journey through this portfolio that you’d like to see more often?
In fact, you could see them whenever you wanted to. We can arrange for that.
You’ll also find my full portfolio has even more paintings than those you saw here.

Friends tell me my paintings are much more impressive in person than these photos over the internet, and they may be right.
The best thing to do is to contact me.
We can work together on what you’re looking for, or even meet at the Artists’ Emporium in Havre de Grace,
where a number of my paintings hang.