These paintings mark a new direction for me. I've taken leave from familiar media: paper, pencil, pen, ink - and have turned to acrylics. I've always loved to draw, but over the past years most of my work has been expressive and a bit surreal - involving little or no added color. A few years ago I felt the need to make a change, to find a new challenge. I decided to paint rather than draw, to reflect the real world rather than an inner state.

My work currently focuses on recording local scenes, most of them in the village of Ballston Spa, NY where I make my home. It is a village of considerable character and historic interest.   At first I was concerned with the accurate rendition of a particular building, place, or tree in order to illustrate the generally comfortable relationship between structure and nature in a small, old American town. Because of my physical limitations and the many hours spent on each piece, I depend on my own photographs for reference. Gradually my interest has shifted toward atmosphere and the effects of light on form. I particularly enjoy the play of light and long shadow in early morning and late afternoon.

Aside from my wish to touch the viewer emotionally, romantically or perhaps even viscerally with a picture or pleasing design, my aim is to create an object of interest, a thing to be experienced close-up as well as at a distance. I want the work to engage the viewer, to ask that he or she note the character of each mark, the layering of pigment, each shift in textural density - to see the paint as paint as well as image. In a sense, to experience the work as it was produced: one mark at a time.