I began painting as an adolescent. It may be that painting served, among other things, as a way for me to mediate issues that arose during this stage of development. My early work was influenced by a love of the "Old Masters" from various periods of history. By the 1960's I started to choose subjects from the life around me. Reflecting back on my choices, I seem to have been interested in artists or performers. I have often returned to these subjects in various disguises - perhaps always about the issues in my life.

Jazz musicians, and the settings they perform in, played a very important part in the way in which I painted. While I may have made preliminary studies, the improvisational approach towards expression really gave me the framework that I used in developing my work. Jazz gave me more freedom to alter elements and become more abstract in my representation of real life subjects. I rarely painted directly from life.

Paint was applied thinly during this period. Color started to become important, although the paintings relied heavily on tonal qualities. Color and tone were used to evoke a mood. My earlier paintings, landscapes, were often limited to earth colors in a small range of values.

Looking back on the paintings of the 60's I see the seeds of work I was to pick up again in the 90's - solitary men in some act of survival.

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