Primarily, I consider myself a painter of portraits and figure compositions. I paint family, friends, models, and patrons who commission me. In my most ambitious work one usually finds the figure(s) in a complicated setting. If the setting is outside, like on a bluff in Malibu or on a street in Los Angeles, one sees "nature" (sky, ocean, mountains, vegetation, ) in some sort of balance with "civilization" (buildings, streets, lamp posts, cars.) If I show the figure(s) inside, the setting can get equally complicated, with still life popping up on furniture, and landscape being reflected in mirrors or seen through windows. I seem always to begin my work by depicting the figure in the midst of the full complexity of life in the here and now.

In order to create a feeling of harmony and spirituality in paintings of such complicated imagery, I carefully consider my use of formal elements and composition. Much of my knowledge of these issues comes from my study of art history. My style takes its cue from the melding of Renaissance realism with sacred art from Byzantium that one observes in Venetian Renaissance painting.

I might evoke a feeling of timelessness and monumentality in a portrait of a father and daughter by having them occupy a large area of the composition, and by placing them in the middle of it. More subtly, by rendering every square inch of the composition as intensely real as I can, I might emphasize its surface qualities and suggest an icon. I might pay particular attention to the light that reveals all form, color and space therein. It might be that the realization of this light through the people, objects, colors, and places that I paint becomes the metaphor for Spirit that underlies all manifestations of physical reality.