Like Bonnard, my paintings are based on sketches and memory - with an element of fantasy thrown in. I paint landscapes, still life, people riding the subway, inside/outside views through windows … I strive to convey emotional states or moods - transient and illusive, serious and playful - by means of color, light, space, and gesture. I also want my paintings to stimulate the viewer's intellect: to be simple so as to be appreciated instantaneously; sufficiently complex to reveal themselves over time. While a painting is in progress, I frequently revisit and sketch or just observe the same motif, searching for new ideas. Because the sketches are not detailed and memory is frail, I think of the paintings as imaginative reconstructions of past experiences: mementos.

Each time I revisit a motif my experience is somewhat different. My mood, the subject, and the manner in which it affects me are different. Each visit may be called a "mood-event," for lack of a better term. Meanwhile, back at the studio, my struggle with the painting is going through a similar process, producing another series of mood-events. Sometimes I think that the "finished" painting represents the result of a succession of mood-events, battling for survival. With some paintings, I think the outcome is clear, there is a winner; in others, I am not sure whether there is a winner, or if the painting is an image of the battle among multiple combatants, creating a mood-event of a different order, one that is more than the sum of its parts.