I live in a small farming town along the shores of the Connecticut River in western Massachusetts, a place with hawks and herons, deer and bobcats, and too many woodchucks for the good of the garden. I’ve been a specialist bookseller of rare and obscure books on the arts, a writer & poet, and drawn & painted since I was young.

I find inspiration in the fields and woods and farms Pioneer Valley as well as on the seacoast of Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard.

Like a piece of music, or a book or a poem, a painting should make you feel something; the heart of painting is emotion. Every art form has defining characteristics and painting is defined by its two-dimensional surface, to which the artist brings color and form. A writer “paints” with words, and an artist “writes” with pigments and brushstrokes. The result, hopefully, is an emotional response in the mind or heart of the audience.

The result of that, (hopefully) is that somebody buys a painting, and then the artist can afford to go out and buy more paint, and then the whole cycle begins again. Or I might just be over-thinking it, that’s been known to happen.

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