As an artist, I have followed many different paths.  For decades, I’ve been known in the DC Metro area as a figurative sculptor, creating works in bronze.  About nine years ago, I embarked on a new creative path.   Color and paint called to me, and I have been exploring new ways to create art. 

 

Previously, my work was mainly three-dimensional.  Long an admirer of paintings, it seemed a path for others.  Gradually, curiosity overcame resistance, and now painting and sculpture are both in my repertoire.

 

This is the second time my art has taken a dramatic turn.  Through college, while studying with Boris Blai, and for years after, my sculptures were more traditional and realistic.  Influences included Classical Greeks, Michelangelo, and Rodin.  During those years, I often sketched from live models.

 

Years after graduate school, I began to transform the figure in unexpected ways.  Musical instruments or other objects appear in human forms.  Qualities of humans and animals are combined.  Influences are Cycladic Greek carvings, African Art, and other periods and cultures.   Sources also include music, dance, yoga, geometry, the natural world and modern sculpture; combined to create an abstract personal style. 

 

Now in painting I draw upon multiple sources, often using my sculptures themselves as subject matter.  My work still tends a bit toward figurative, but also incorporates landscape and still life.  Most recently, my paintings use what I find in the world to become more abstract.

 

Composition and design have always been priorities in my art. While my focus is not to deliberately create works that provoke or portray emotion, it appears to have that effect, as viewers comment on the strong responses the work evokes for them.

 

There is an irresistible immediacy to painting, and the ability to mostly control the process from start to finish is very appealing.  The lusciousness of color is seductive.

 

In painting or sculpture, the goal is the same; to create beautiful objects that are uniquely personal, have a true presence, and hopefully, a universal resonance.

 

My sculpture is shown locally and nationally; and has been commissioned for individuals, organizations, and public spaces.  It has been my pleasure to teach at both the university and community level.  I will always be a sculptor, and now am thoroughly enjoying an expanded creative life as a painter as well.

Please see my website for more images and information.

 

MFA  Sculpture , 1992     American University, Wash., DC       

            (Mark Oxman, Stanley Lewis, Deborah Kahn)

Walt Bartman, Ann Schlesinger & Others, DC Area, Painting Classes, 2013 - Present

Boris Blai, Philadelphia, PA Private Studies, 3 years

BA Art Education,    University of Maryland, College Park