Dignity, compassion, empathy, eloquence and just plain warmth are a few of the words I try to put in my art. Are they always obvious? No. I find them in the works of those I have admired all my life and believe sometimes I have been a bit successful. Art has grown for me in its meaning over the years. A good composition and a well designed painting used to be enough. Beautiful ladies used to grace my canvases and their simple physical qualities were reason enough to fill a canvas.
I still have that simple outlook when first beginning a piece. Age has developed my sense of sight though, seasoning it with those wonderful ideas of dignity and compassion.
Forty or so years ago I was invited to sketch at a dance studio. Filling a sketchbook with lovely young ladies was the idea I had for going there. During my visit I observed the teacher demonstrate how simple gestures of fingers are so important to the dance. Carrying that idea back with me I made an effort to apply it to dock workers tying up a ship at the East River dock in New York. Giving a model something to do rather than just being there became important to me. I studied the little things in paintings of my heros. In my own work I found the look of a granddad holding a grandchild a challenge, and a reward capturing that pure love on canvas. The look a baby gives her mother, just about to take the breast. These moments, a gift given to me, I give to others.
Models are not simply posing, they are giving me the gift of myself. Allowing me to look inward to who I am.
