“Always, always I must communicate and create.”

This has been my artist statement from my earliest days as I searched  for ways to communicate and create in the arts of writing, painting, illustration, photography and most recently drawing. 

It is in drawing the figure with charcoal that my creative life has taken on a new challenge. Drawing the human form holds a special place in the world of fine art. And, it is in expressive drawing of the human form that an artist reaches his or her highest goals in art making. I discovered that by getting back to the basics of drawing and simplifying my materials to paper, chalk, blenders and an eraser I could focus on the model and reach new goals as a figurative artist. Also, by reducing the palette to shades of gray, and searching for the lights and darks of chiaroscuro, ( Italian for “light-dark”) I found a dramatic way of simplifying my art and making that critical connection with the viewer.

So, it is with figurative art that I attempt to capture the human condition.

And, it is through observation of the model, understanding the human body and searching for the light that shines on and from within the model that I attempt to describe an illusive emotion that only the human form can deliver.