Traditional Portraits These portraits are of one or more individuals, with traditional compositions and in traditional poses. I encourage the sitter to pose in person, but time constraints usually preclude live sittings. My alternative is to ask the sitter to come to my studio for an hour and pose for a number of photographs. All portraits include the sitter’s hands, as these are very expressive, sometimes more so than the face. This also allows me to include references to the person’s life or nature. In a portrait of a doctor, for example , in "Traditional Portraits" of the Catalog, the sitter holds a copy of a book he had published. A portrait of my daughter Sarah ("Traditional Portraits")) shows her holding a cup of chai from Starbucks—her favorite—and her casual grasp on it shows her carefree nature.

Animal Portraits Needless to say, live sittings are out of the question. My cat Ferris obligingly posed for me, and I was able to capture his benign demeanor. (Catalog, "Animal Portraits").

House Portraits The family home is an excellent subject for a painting, whether one is moving from it, or to it. A painted portrait allows for the removal of unsightly shrubs, cars or telephone poles, a greater lushness to a garden or a certain idealization that simply is not possible in a photograph ("House Portraits"). Like Traditional Portraits, the House Portrait can be enhanced with specific references to the lives of building’s occupants. For my friend Lawrence’s house in Somerville, for example (House Portrait (c)), I added Lawrence’s green bicycle—and his wife Margaret’s tan bicycle, including Margaret’s red pannier—as a reference to their weekend bicycle rides on the Minuteman Bikeway.

Other Portraits A portrait need not be just a picture of a person, animal or place. After my daughter Sarah and I went to Vienna in 2001, I painted a Viennese landmark with the two of us barely sketched in ("Other Portraits" (a)). It is a portrait of a moment in the lives of two people, a depiction of shared experience. It is a portrait nonetheless. Alternatively, a portrait can take the form of a still life. My still life Self Portrait ("Other Portraits") contains many physical manifestations of me and my life: letters from abroad (my travels), an Au Bon Pain cup (my love of their coffee), tubes of paint and some favorite paintings, a box of matches (I smoke), my wife Anne’s old drivers license (still married). It is a time capsule of a person’s life, and is an effective way of conveying an identity.

Landscapes Landscape painting is my first love, as it contains the forms and the light that pose the greatest challenges—and rewards--for a painter. My landscapes reflect my personal experience, and include roads in upstate New York, Memorial Drive in Cambridge, Massachusetts and views of Cape Cod.

Other Projects I am a painter, and I do not limit myself to traditional images to be put in a frame and hung on a wall. An example is painting on a tray, either purchased new at Filene’s or Marshall’s or at some antique store in Essex. One tray was done for my grandmother’s 90th birthday. When I was a child, she took all of her 15 grandchildren to a big old house in Annisquam on Cape Ann. Back then, we spent the whole summer there, and my grandmother would feed us, clothe us, entertain us, and put us to bed—day after day. For her birthday, I painted a tray showing her on the porch of the old house, in a moment of repose after all the children had been packed off to the beach with the babysitter. The cards and croquet mallets are lying about; the house is quiet. On the border I painted the names of each of her grandchildren who spent their summers in that house. It was one of the most successful gifts I have ever given. When my grandmother told me she cried when she received the gift, I told he that was all right: the tray had 3 coats of spar varnish!

ADDRESS
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Cambridge, MA 02139

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