Born in 1945 I was the only child of German-American parents, and
have lived my entire life
in Baltimore, Maryland. I have been married to
Fran for over 36 years, and our two children
have given us five
grandchildren.
My father's hobby was building model trains, and we often built
trains together. This detail-
oriented work taught me patience, and the
attention to detail, that I would later need to
become a realist
painter. The other major early influence on me was the movies. My
parents
and I used to watch at least two movies a week. This sparked my
imagination, and my sense
of beauty and composition. In particular, I
really enjoyed the ‘Westerns’ and ‘Adventure’
movies. My absolute
favorite movie was Disney's ‘20,000 Leagues Under the Sea’.
All throughout my school years I could always draw very well, but
didn't take art too seriously
until 1963, when on a whim, I enrolled in
The Maryland Institute College of Art instead of going
to business
school. At the Institute, despite the popularity of abstract
expressionism, I found that
I preferred realism, particularly the style
of the old masters. My mentor, Joseph Sheppard, taught
me the ‘Maroger
Method’, a painting discipline that emulates the chemistry and qualities
of
oil paintings by the Dutch Masters.
Probably most important to my growth as an artist, was a job I had
during my years at the Institute,
in the window display department of
Hecht's Department Store. Learning how to collect the
right props, and
arrange them in a display window, is very similar to the work I do in
planning
and creating my paintings. This practical training was so much
more useful than anything I
could have learned in the staid atmosphere
of art school.
My primary artistic heroes are the realists of the 17th Century, and
the impressionists of the 19th
and early 20th Century. Early on I was
exposed to Jan Vermeer, and for me he has always been
the pinnacle
figure in painting. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Vermeer's work
always
read right for me. That is to say the settings, the props, and
the figures depicted, all had an
innate believability. Vermeer showed me
that an artist could be extremely successful, by placing
a normal
person in a real room with good or at least interesting lighting, and
attempt to paint
merely what he saw.
On its face a Vermeer painting might seem simplistic, but in truth
portraying the complexities of
real images correctly is insanely
difficult. Vermeer used numerous techniques and short cuts
to achieve
his artistic goals, and I use them too, along with many others, some of
which are
even unique to my work. But at the end of the process, when
you view the finished painting,
all that is left is an image, which
hopefully appears as real, as it is beautiful. Less of an
inspiration,
Vermeer is more like a challenge. In the final result, the work must be
as pure and as
real as can be.
