Throughout my life I have loved producing art and in the past ten or so years I have been working exclusively as a fine artist. I grew up in Ecorse, Michigan, a small suburb southwest of Detroit. Most of my professional life was spent in western Massachusettes, and I now live on Martha’s Vineyard where I have a studio. My work has been shown primarily in Martha’s Vineyard galleries, such as the Dragonfly, L’Elegance Art Gallery, A Gallery, and Carol Craven Gallery. I consider myself a Martha’s Vineyard artist and recently joined a select group of artists included in the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital Permanent Art Collection. My inspiration derives not only from the Island’s beauty but also from its richly diverse multicultural community. A history of inclusiveness has welcomed generations of Americans of different racial backgrounds, creating a community of residents and vacationers unlike any in the country. It is precisely the Island’s mixture of place with varied people that creates the beautiful hues that energize and give vibrancy to my artistic vision and purpose. However, I am first and foremost an artist who recognizes the importance of emotion on both the viewer and doer of art. Indeed, it is my emotional connection to my subject matter that is so evident in the depiction of strong contemplative moods of people, objects and places. My techniques are defined by discovery and innovation as I strive to achieve a synergy among the materials, method and subject content. I take pride in the uniqueness of my methods where scratchboard art may be combined with pastels on claybord and/or egg tempera paintings applied with brushwork rarely seen in temperas. My works that combine scratchboard and pastels allow the precision of a scratching tool such the straight pin with the rich colors of wax and soft pastels. My egg temperas do not follow the classical egg tempera procedures. Rather than the traditional method of layering small brush strokes with very fine sable brushes I use a variety of brushes from sable to synthetic to bristle with brush action more of a "pat" than a stroke, similar to "pointillism." In this way I achieve soft edges and blending properties not easily achieved with the traditional methods. The resulting work yields the illuminating beauty for which temperas are known, but also has a glowing pastel-like quality.