Born in Pennsylvania in 1962. Raised in Owego, New York. Graduated from Cornell University in 1984 (B.A. in History). Migrated to Washington, D.C. in 1986 and reside in the 16th Street Heights neighborhood. Began work for the World Bank in 1993 and paroled in July of 2016.
I have drifted for countless hours among great art works (and lesser ones too) in museums, commercial galleries, government offices, and central bank collections in North, Central, and South America, Europe, and southern Africa. I have been swallowed whole by art books at home, at libraries, and numerous bookstores. Friends and sometimes mere acquaintances have allowed me to explore their bookshelves. Outside of a Smithsonian drawing course many years ago, these experiences constitute my formal classroom. Wall text at exhibitions holds little interest for me; I would prefer to soak up color, texture, and technique in front of canvas. In those instances — more often than not — the hairs on my neck and arms tingle. I genuflect in reverence to Nicolas de Staël, Hans Hoffmann, and Pierre Soulages among so many others. After much encouragement, I began wielding palette knives in 2006.
My abstractions are inspired by scenery, but most importantly the images are generated by a wide range of poets and their poetry. For sources, I have drawn on Hans Andreus, Jorge Luis Borges, William Bronk, Stephen Crane, Tadeusz Dabrowski, Langston Hughes, Philippe Jaccottet, The Kalevala, Gerrit Kouwenaar, D.H. Lawrence, Federico García Lorca, Antonio Machado, Robert Melançon, Eugenio Montale, Rainer Maria Rilke, Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Rodenko, Wallace Stevens, Mark Strand, Wisława Symborska, Giuseppe Ungaretti, and William Carlos Williams.
Publically, three works — Pond Surface and Below; Free from Doubt; and The Sun Gives Way/Słońce może ustąpić — were separately auctioned in 2007, 2011, and 2014 to respectively benefit Latino Services at the Whitman-Walker Clinic, MetroTeen Aids, and The Kosciuszko Foundation; all organizations function in Washington, D.C.