Artist Statement

As a sociology professor for almost thirty years (at the University of New Hampshire), I specialized in mental illness and suicide, byproducts of troubled human minds. While books and academic papers provide one means of exploring and presenting ideas about people who struggle with themselves and the world around them, I found that words can only do so much. Words, for example, cannot fully capture the most visible and expressive part of a person — the face — and the internal and external struggles that facial expressions reveal. By turning to painting, I found that I can investigate the human face and its various expressions in a deeper and often abstract way as I experiment with different compositions, colors, and textures. I discovered too that painting forces me to examine and put on canvas, often subconsciously, visual representations of my own mental states and struggles.

Unlike my academic writing, I do not explicitly reference sociological or other theories of human mental states or behavior in my paintings. Instead, my work is part of an almost century-old genre now known as Outsider Art. Works in this genre are created by those like me who are located outside the normal conventions of the art world and who convey unconventional ideas, often through abstract human faces. Such paintings, like mine, seek to show the paradoxical beauty that can be found in vulnerability and despair and invite viewers to reflect on their own sometimes complicated and uncomfortable feelings and experiences that they may unknowingly share with others.

My process is simple.  I place a canvass flat on a table or floor.  I then apply and spread acrylic paint (mixed with thickening medium) on the canvas (or on paper glued to the canvass) with a palette knife.  I often use an oil paint stick to add lines and circles (and other shapes) to a painting.  My paintings evolve as I work and most have multiple layers as I paint and repaint until I arrive at something that appeals to me at some level.  As I continue to grow as an artist, I continue to try to understand what makes a painting compelling and moving, not just to me but to the viewer.