I really respect artists that take on subject matter that requires a great deal of research. Personally, I’ve never felt qualified to address topics outside my experience in my work. I don’t feel I have the right to go there. At the same time, I want to avoid navel-gazing, as they call it, and am interested in incorporating and learning from people with different life experiences than my own. In terms of color, mood, and composition, that comes from my memory bank of visual information.
As a kid in the Catskills, I was surrounded by moody, tumultuous, grey skies, intense snowy winters, and lush green summers. There was also a great deal of blight and abandoned, dilapidated houses in the area. I’m sure this began my love affair with greyscale, blues, greens, and bittersweet melancholia. New York gave me access to a broad range of people and cultures, all with their own sense of color, style, and mood. I think it’s unavoidable that I intertwine all I’ve seen and experienced into my work.