I source the inspiration for my work from a wide variety of possibilities. For specific subjects, I mostly look to my surroundings. Constantly seeking the perfect flower, garden, or landscape to paint is a never ending quest. Living in New Hampshire offers a tremendous amount of inspiration. From the seacoast gardens to the White Mountains, and the lakes, ponds and streams of the Sunapee region, New Hampshire offers a great assortment of the most beautiful scenes to paint. As with the masters before me, the famous painting spots of Conway, spring flowers of the Kangamangus and the gardens of The Fells never cease to inspire.
With all my travels throughout North America and Europe, I’m always looking for that scene that will inspire the next stroke of my brush. Alpine flowers of Glacier National Park to a flowering cactus in Santa Fe, will always capture my attention. Tulips in bloom at Keukenhof, spring flowers of Lauterbrunnen Valley to a lone flower pot sitting on a wall in Tuscany, all have become part of my portfolio.
Studying the great fine artists, both historical and current, helps me to shape the way I look at the world and the canvas. It affects my composition, color theory, all the way to brush stroke technique. I get inspired when I’m able to see an original work, up close in person, at a museum that I have studied in print for many years. You can obviously see detail and color composition with a level of clarity not available in print or on the web.
Some of the greats and their work that captures me: Claude Monet, F. Childe Hassam, Frank Weston Benson, Edmund Charles Tarbel, John Singer Sargent, Martin Johnson Heade, William Merritt Chase, Willard Leroy Metcalf, Frank Vincent DuMond, and Edward Hopper, just to name a few
Some of the current artist that really influence my vision of the world: Mary Minifie, Sam Vokey, John C. Traynor, Robert Douglas Hunter, Caleb Stone, Don Stone, Everett Raymond Kinstler, Jean Lightman,
I am grateful to all of them for their work and even more to those who have tutored me and shared their experience with me directly.
Plein air opportunities are all around us, I make it my work to capture them. All these observations of life and my surroundings give me a never ending source of inspiration for my work.
Art is not what you see, but rather what you make others see.
-Edgar Degas
I don’t believe in making pencil sketches and then painting your landscape in your studio. You must be right under the sky. You must match your colors as nearly as you can to those you see before you.
-William Merrit Chase