My Inspiration

I take great inspiration from other artists. My first love — John Singer Sargent. Yes, he painted rich society patrons. But he also painted so much more. His faces are almost photo realistic, their hands he often doesn’t bother with at all, but his fabrics are sublime to me. When I look closely at the way he painted silks and satins and velvets the brushstrokes are totally modern in an abstract expressionist way. It is only when you back up that they come together into a recognizable object. His whites and blacks are gorgeous, multicolored and multi toned. I strive to see and depict his seemingly effortless strokes and the range of color he sees.

Recently I had the wonderful opportunity to visit the Museum of Modern Art in Paris and was stunned by two spectacular Bonnard painting side by side, one of his wife in the bath and one landscape. I had heard about the series he did of his wife but had never seen one. The color and patterns, in both painting, were shockingly brilliant and imaginative and I want to do that. Ditto for a Chagall at the Centre Pompidou. I never quite understood his work before, but that one knocked me back. And I keep returning to the work of Alice Neil, her unique style, and the way she captured the personality of her subjects.

As for contemporary painters, Jennifer Packer knocks me over. Her compositions, the variation of her brushstrokes, her beautiful color. Kathryn Geismar, too. Her combination of exquisite realism and abstraction.

Brushstrokes that come straight from the heart, color that glows off the page. I want to do that.

“Art is always made from other art, and you just have to find your place.”
— Romare Bearden