I  first stepped into SVA for an interview with the Director/President Silas Rhodes when the gray 4 story building was on 2nd Ave and 23rd Street. Mr. Rhodes looked at my portfolio of charcoal life drawings that I had with me from the year I spent at the University of Maryland, and he immediately accepted me. Surely SVA needed students. Ha. He took me and my Mom on a tour of the school and some of the classes. I was amazed at the talent I saw from the student work. I stayed 3 years and graduated with a certificate in illustration.

The first year I commuted every day by bus and subway from NorthJersey to 23rd st., lugging homework and the like into the city. The second year, me, Bob Lindsay and Richmond Jones found an apartment  on Tiemann Place way up on the west side at Broadway and 125th Street subway station. Why didn’t we find a place closer to SVA? Well, we didn’t. Stupid on our part.

We had a great time in that apartment, though. Three guys in three rooms, mine was the ‘living room’ with kitchenette where all the parties happened. When Richmond left I took his room. 

NYC and SVA was the place to learn and discover. Fun times. Many a time Lindsay and I walked up Madison Ave and over to 57th Street visiting galleries along the way and up through Central Park to 125th street and our apartment on Tiemann Place. I lost touch with Lindsay but am in touch with Richmond.

I had some great instructors at SVA: Peter Heinemann (painting), Byrune Hogarth and John Gabor (anatomy),  Jack Pollock (drawing), Handelmann (printing) George Ortman (design), James Kearns (sculpture), John Gundelfinger, Robert Andrew Parker, David Levine, (drawing) Thomas B Allen, Robert Weaver and Russell Hoban (illustration). Many are gone now, but they made a great impression on me and my future in art.

All my paintings border at the periphery of surrealism. The mages I use have changed from time to time, but the idea behind them remain the same, distorted perspectives, juxtaposed objects, ominous symbols and the absurdities in my environment and some sense and nonsense. That blank  canvas tacked to my easel is always a challenge, almost a fear of not capturing my soul and experiences on the surface fast enough.

Most times I work from sketches that I freely transfer to a canvas maintaining the composition and mood from my original concept.  As for my Q paintings, without the use of a sketch, I paint my canvas with assorted colors and follow by drawing shapes, images, any thing that comes to mind with no thoughts of composition, design, perspective, space, those design elements so essential in a painting. Then I look to combine structure, design, composition, brush work and color rhythms. Artist Max Beckmann said he wanted to "express the idea that hides behind so called reality." This is what I want to accomplish in my paintings as well, by being true to myself, my ideas, my feelings. Painting is magic.

Soon after graduating from SVA I was drafted in the US Army and sent to Ft. Sam Houston, San Antonio, Texas as an “illustrator”, making charts and graphs for the personnel section. With time off I drew and painted the local scene, won some local and state juried art awards plus a 1st place in mixed media in the All US Army Art Show and joined Shook-Carrington Gallery. After my 2 year military service we ventured south to Mexico and the University of the Americas (an American University) in Mexico City. Living in another country was a great experience. I graduated with an MFA (painting) and soon journeyed north to Santa Fe, NM, where I applied for a position teaching junior high arts & crafts in Espanola for a couple years. After a divorce I moved back east to work as an illustrator/cartoonist for the editorial sections of The Record newspaper in Hackensack, NJ. In 2001. After 26 years at The Record I took a buyout the paper offered and moved south to Bucks County, PA., where Susan and I each maintain studios in one structure. My daughter, Michelle, lives in Queretaro, Mexico with husband Luis, and son Seth and family live in Dover, Arkansas.      Above is a recent photo of the artist 2024