A woman art teacher I had in night school freed me to explore abstraction with an assignment where we were supposed to invent our own visual world. The creatures that emerged gave me a visual vocabulary, which I am still exploring. It’s always hard to get started, sometimes I begin with an idea, but more often it’s like playing, seeing how the work grows. Some of it is psychological and emotional, connecting to the collective unconscious or the super-subconscious. Like music, there’s a certain link that connects culture with culture on visual common ground. My work reflects interaction with the outside world, filtered through my internal inspiration. Its value is through sharing it with other people and inviting them to play.

I’m colorblind, so my palette is experimental, the more vibrant the better, I’m play with the relationship among values. Sometimes I use materials I’ve collected, seeing how they work with each other, found objects and inclusions like bee bees, veils, colored string, sea grass and feathers. The pieces establish their own universe, plumbing the sub-conscious and drawing on every day life as well as art history through the ages, particularly the organic guys like Gorky, Miro and Kandinsky.

I work at what I’m doing until a bell rings inside me. The piece begins to feel whole, an order emerges from the chaos, the shapes become creatures carrying on and they begin to tell stories. Titles come to me. I’m also dyslexic, so sometimes they’re pretty funny: “Who Do Dancer;” “St. Valentine’s Day Manicure”; “Tipples Nip”; the “Love Monster.”  

My earliest memory of art is finding a book in the library on Hieronymous Bosch when I was about 8. The images sparked my interest because they were funny, different from reality—situations you’d never see in real life. And there were lot of naked women. I used to have a saying I made up for inspiration on my refrigerator “An erect approach to a smooth flowing dream.” There’s always been erotic content in my work, my curiosity and libido drive my imagination, and I am drawn to artists who explore this through history, from the cave paintings to the abstract expressionists to the artists I know now. My art is a universal love letter to the explorers everywhere.

Biographical, does not really fit in statement

I’ve worked that way since I was a little kid in North Andover. It was all farms then, I played in the woods all the time and my family had a lot of animals. I’d bring in red clay from the backyard and form little sculptures, paint images on the barn walls with different size rollers, make figures out of wire. Art was my best subject all through school.

I sketched in junkyards, at the zoo, in museums, went to night school at the Institute of Art in Boston and worked in the office after I got out of the Navy. I was on an air-craft carrier USS Saratoga for a nine month cruise in the Mediterranean, so I got to learn about art history visiting Europe. I went to Art School on the GI Bill when I got back, where one art teacher told me to “just keep scribbling.” I moved to Portsmouth in 1970, worked the docks and construction crews to support my art career.

About the OAA and upcoming showcase

I’ve lived and worked in the region for over 40 years, been part of the Ogunquit Art Association since 1985. I’ve always felt accepted and encouraged here, influenced, challenged and supported by the members. The artists who show here, the ones who love what they were doing helped free all of us to take more chances. Some are controversial but the collective beauty and quality is absorbed by the artists here making them more aware of their own quality and value—they take away what they need in inspiration from each other’s work and apply it with love to their own. The overall quality seems to grow. I see work I wish I’d done, even though it may be entirely different from my style. For me the imagery doesn’t matter --it is all about how much love is put into the work.

I’m really excited about exhibiting with Richard Lethem.  I attended a lecture he gave after he moved to the area.  His work was very dramatic and awakening. I was blown away by his imagery and color. We seem to have a similar process and he is a really decent human being, with an invisible ego.

My large piece in the exhibit illustrates my process. That was a big piece developed in a very small space, under 150 square feet. I started with three models, using some of their shapes and forms (you’d never know it) and worked on it quite a while—it took a long time for it to grow. It started out in design loosened up as it grew. The new work for the showcase started from the idea of portraits, but I didn't know how it was going to come out. I started to grab things I’d collected or made to include and put them together, always working with music. It’s meditation, mostly internal, coming from inside and showing up in whatever you’re working with, incorporating whatever you have available. The new work is a culmination everything I’ve done up to now.