When I am commissioned to paint a building or landscape that is special to a client, it is because they have seen my work and they believe that I am the right artist to bring to life their personal experience of that image. My job then is not just to capture the basic exterior elements, but to integrate those with the intrinsic meaning that the location holds for my client. Only through this synthesis of form and content will the painting realize the perfect celebration of a moment in time.

 

By necessity, the actual work of creating a painting is rather solitary. But before this process begins, it's brainstorming time! Talking to, even meeting with a client is such a joy for me. I am not only fascinated, but actually need to hear what they love about the image of their structure or site. What do their eyes see and, more importantly, what do they see in their mind's eye? Ultimately, for the painting to 'work', I must listen well and try to understand what impressed the client so much that they felt compelled to commemorate this place. Why have they decided that a painting is a more emotionally effective evocation than a photograph?

 

For “The House on Cranberry Street”, my client was unable to present me with a suitable picture of his home. So I traveled to Brooklyn six times and took hundreds of photos. Nothing I shot felt 'right'. We put our heads together and I asked a lot of questions trying to figure out why the answers couldn't be found in the photos I had taken. It turned out to be just like using a search engine online -- you have to pose the right question. At last I asked, "Well, what is your favorite time of day when you're at home?" "Oh, that's easy,” he replied, “10 a.m.” 

 

The next morning, I set out for Brooklyn once more and stood in front of his house. At exactly 10 a.m. I saw a rainbow of colors softly caress the lintel and spill down the front steps. I saw elegant reflections of leaves mirrored quite differently in each of the window panes. And, wonder of wonders, the old slate sidewalk plates had taken on the palette of Monet's water lily panels! It was at this moment that I ‘found’ his painting.

 

In "...729 Penn" I was asked to re-create my client’s childhood home from the 1960s. Unfortunately, he didn't have any photographs of the house as it looked in his youth. However, thanks to the internet, my client was able to hand over a manila envelope chockablock full of pictures. There, at the top of the pile, was an image of his childhood bike, the exact shiny red '26 incher' that he had parked on his front porch sixty years ago! Versions of silver milk crates, a small fan for the window, and a pear tree bursting with fruit graced page after page of photographic paper. Happily, within the stack there was a photo of my client's grandfather swinging a golf club in front of a portion of the house. This gave me my much-needed shot of the front door! 

 

I told my client that the painting was destined to be a kind of Frankenstein monster, a stitching together of these disparate pieces into a whole I'd never seen, a picture that only existed in his memory. I think we both understood that what I ultimately produced would be a reflection of an idealized childhood. To capture this, I decided to conceptualize the painting as a page from a child's storybook, and so chose a version of pointillism, rendering simple images via thousands of brilliantly colored tiny dots. My success (and great satisfaction) in capturing my client’s remembered past was made clear when he purchased several prints of his painting to distribute as family Christmas presents.

 

So, you see, my aim is not simply to reproduce or even re-envision a cherished photograph that someone hands me. The purpose of my work is to delve deeper, to become a conduit between a client’s desires and expectations and my own creative expression. In accomplishing this through my paintbrush, I pull forth the impact of the image to honor the inner life of both the place and the person for whom this site is so special.