Southwest Landscapes

Spectacularly serene.  Mesas. Deserts. Canyons. Gorges. Dunes. Mountains. Lakes. Rivers.  And skies as vast as the ocean.  The Southwest landscape is a wonderland of dramatic natural settings as deep and rich as their primordial roots.  Created during my residency in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and visits to Lake Tahoe in the Sierra Nevadas, my series plays with the striking rock formations, unparalleled palettes, and diverse textures, from scruffy to lush, craggy to velvety, gushing to billowy.  The earthy rawness is heavenly hypnotic.   

Ancient Roots, Tent Rocks National Monument, Cochiti, New Mexico

Medium: Oil & Mixed Media on Canvas

Size: 18" X 24"

No view is cast in stone. Interpretations can abound.  The amusing tent-shaped peaks and exposed octopus-like roots of the Ponderosa pine inspired further whimsy.  To breathe playful life into a largely cream-colored monochromatic prehistoric site, I deepened the rose, salmon, blue, and terracotta colors of the rocks along the path and of the striations of the rock faces.  I even added new colors of greens, purples, and grays.  I decided to dust the foreground rocks with real sand after a gust of wind tossed the wet canvas face down on the ground during one plein-air painting session.

Purchase Inquiry

Detail - Ancient Roots

Small pebbles from the on-site path were glued onto a rock face to affect true, three-dimensional depth of a millions-year-old sedimentary rock layer in the foreground.  This multimedia treatment contrasts starkly against the three-dimensional illusion created with the series of precipitous rock walls stretching into the distance toward a hazy vanishing point. 

Purchase Inquiry

Morning Reflections,

Abiquiú Lake, New Mexico

Medium:  Oil on Canvas

Size:  14" X 14"

Fluctuating light.  Fickle weather.  I battled both when catching the reflections of famed New Mexican painter Georgia O’Keeffe’s favorite mountain, Cerro Pedernal, on Abiquiú Lake.  Within three hours of plein-air painting of this high desert locale 7,000 feet above sea level, five weather systems rolled through: sunshine, clouds, rain, hail, and strong wind.  Out of necessity, I quickly captured my impressions of fleeting moments of this kaleidoscopic setting of the Southwest.

Purchase Inquiry

Detail - Morning Reflections 

Impressionistic paintings are comprised of layers of spontaneous undefined and separate brush strokes of contrasting colors as inspired by hues and light.  When viewing the applications from a distance, they amalgamate into clear forms and identifiable images as part of a whole composition.  But each close-up of a slice of the entire painting can stand on its own as a little abstract painting, like this corner from Morning Reflections.

Purchase Inquiry

Grand Canyon

Medium:  Oil on Canvas

Size:  18" X 24"

Striking contrasts exemplify the inherent majesty of the North Rim view of the Colorado River cutting through the Grand Canyon.  Towering precipice, deep valley.  Impervious stone, fluid water.  My interpretation dramatizes them further.  Defined orange-red foreground, amorphous blue-grey background.  Smooth rock surfaces, crusty rock beds.  Glints of light, dense shadows.  A homage to one of the world’s wonders.

Purchase Inquiry

Detail - Grand Canyon

The large side rock was carefully crafted for singular effect.  Palette knife applications of thickened yellow ochre and iron red paint molded intricate fissures, while a brown glaze fashioned shadows.
 

The River Wild,

Abiquiú, New Mexico

In this interpretation of the vista of the Rio Chama, a tributary of the Rio Grande, from Highway 84 in Abiquiú, the diverse textures of the arresting high desert of northern New Mexico are fiercely raised up via a bold impasto style created with a palette knife.  The thickness of the mountain forest.  The cragginess of the mesa.  The scrubbiness of the pinions and junipers.  The grittiness of the sand.  The frothiness of the rapids.  The rushing of the river running around the bend.   An untamed statement of untamed terrain.

Purchase Inquiry

Detail - The River Wild

An impasto technique delivers real dimension.  The palette knife can be used to blend thick paint (as for the flat plains and river) or to apply sharp strokes to create distinct forms and activity (as for the bushes, rapids, and mesas)

Purchase Inquiry

Lily Lake,

Lake Tahoe's Sierra Nevadas, California

Medium: Oil on Canvas

Serene and pure.  That's how this setting felt during morning plein-air sessions -- and likely the inspiration for its name.  The painting, however, crackles from quick strokes and contrasting textures: soft grasses, prickly pines, craggy stones under mist, flowing water.  The composition rocks, too.  The lake's S-shape pulls the eye in and back.  Attention twists around via the torque of crisscrossing invisible diagonal lines connecting similar forms: the arrowhead shape of the mountain and lake tributary and the roundness of the grassy peninsula and distant mountain.  Morning peace becomes electric.  

Purchase Inquiry

Death Valley 

Radiating with life.  Such is the interpretation of my unforgettable hiking experience of the monumental sand dunes of California's Death Valley National Park.  Earthy ocher and olive tones of the sand and passionate crimson of the crater.  Hot electric yellow orange sky.  Sultry textures.  Sensual lines.  Sexual shapes.  All flowing in and out and around in one vibrant abstraction that belies the somber name of this location. 

Purchase Inquiry

Detail - Death Valley 

All of the palette's rich colors blended together create a three-dimensional downward spiral at the crater's edges and basin.   This closeup is its own abstract painting. 

Purchase Inquiry

Another Angle - Death Valley

Might there be a dark side to this abstraction that more truly reflects the park's name?  Turn the piece 45 degrees to the left.  Is that caped figure the Harbinger of Death?  Which twist is more ironic?  Life?  Or death? Or are they one in the same for this singular landscape, one leading to the other in a timeless, endless cycle?  

Cave Art

Primeval art resurrected.  This seven-work series aims to re-create the primal power and beauty of scenes from caves of Altamira (14,500 B.C.) in northern Spain and Chauvet-Pont-d' Arc (30,000 B.C.)  and Lascaux (15,500 B.C.) in southern France.  Cro-Magnon shaman artists brilliantly coalesced the elements of abstract visual language -- composition, color, texture, line, shape, form, and pattern in their simplest expressions -- to imagine reverential masterworks of the lives, movements, and spiritual energy of the animals of their world.  Most of the paintings of my series, ironically -- or appropriately, were fashioned while in my own "cave" during COVID lockdowns and throughout an 11-month-long isolating illness. In my interpretations, a stucco base affects the uneven surface and cauliflower texture on the limestone caves.  My other techniques are specified as updates to inventive prehistoric technologies.  

30,000 B.C. Redux:

Facing Horses,

Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Cave, France

Media: Mixed - Stucco, Acrylic, and Oil on Panel

Size: 30" X 30"

Profiles of equine dignity.  Shaman artists lined and shadowed the proud horses and a background lion's hind with charcoaled burnt wood; I used a purplish black oil paint.  The choice of the original cave location capitalizes on the stone's natural cracks for a design effect, here created with incisions in the stucco base.  I emboldened the original rock hues of ochre and rust with an abstracted melange of shapes in a calico of colors -- white, celery, buttery yellow, brown, caramel, and cream.

Purchase Inquiry

SOLD - 30,000 B.C. Redux: 

Charging Lionesses, Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Cave, France

Media: Mixed: Stucco, Acrylic, and Oil on Panel

Size: 40" X 33" 

Raw animal energy explodes from a far right section of a pride of lionesses rushing to kill bulls and cows (not shown).  Choosing a flatter, smoother light ochre- and cream-colored portion of the limestone wall to draw the scene, the shaman artist overlayed bodies and lines to create perspective and evoke the pack's density and powerful forward surge.  The individual faces and personalities of each lioness attest to the artist's keen eye and memory.  To lend a more contemporary flair, I chose blue-grey and muted cerulean colors to line and shadow the figures.

Purchase Inquiry

30,000 B.C. Redux:

Lions, Bison, and Venus, Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Cave, France

Media: Mixed - Stucco, Acrylic, and Oil on Panel 

Size: 36" X 24" 

A cave triptych of primal instinct conveyed through storytelling, strong lines, and iconic imagery.  Is the wandering lion pride in the cave's innermost sanctum (left) looking for prey, water, or new territory?  Are the lion and bison on a projected outer rock (right) casing out the pride out of self-protection -- or just plain curiosity?  The oldest image, "Venus and the Sorcerer" -- a goddess figure integrated with the lion's and bison's legs -- unifies feminine and masculine energy.  In my rendition, built-up stucco and light/dark color contrasts affect the perspective of the location's three dimensions.

Purchase Inquiry

14,500 B.C. Redux: Bison, Altamira Cave, Spain

Media: Mixed - Stucco, Acrylic, and Oil on Panel

Size: 24" X 24"

The power and the glory.  This enigmatic bison transcends over a melange of scores of Altamira's original ceiling images.  Arresting, steady, and upright, he shines among those galloping or wallowing in grounded fetal positions.  My re-creation further electrifies his radiance with a striking contrast between velvety red ochres, cabernet reds, and violets against a yellow ochre stone-like stuccoed background. Framing techniques of a golden white body halo and renderings in four corners (clockwise from top left: bison hind, wallowing bison, and receding bottom ledges) evoke an enshrinement and honor the shaman artist's possible intentions.  Cultural experts hypothesize that the cave's works were part of rituals to contact otherworldly spirits. If so, this beauty of a mighty beast was likely the chief channel.   

Detail - Bison 

Stylized threads of cracks and a stucco base affect the authenticity of the cauliflower texture and natural stresses of the cave's limestone walls.  The cracks are woven in and out throughout the bison's body for full effect.  

17,000 B.C. Redux: The Black Stag,

Lascaux Cave, France

Media: Mixed - Stucco, Acrylic, Oil on Panel

Size: 24" X 20" 

Magnificence in reality and art.  A 1,500-pound stag flaunts the largest antlers ever known - 12 feet in diameter and 90 pounds.  In the shaman's stylized rendering, colossal crowns with strange tines arch backward to heighten the body's curves and create forward movement.  A distorted eye, looking back, and reddish exhales suggest fear and fury as he charges away.  Although the shaman drew the stag with black charcoaled wood, I chose an understated chocolate set against a dignified palette of stone, creams, and yellows.  Gold leaf affects a precious metal embedded in the original rock, a final touch for this regal animal, now extinct in reality but living forever in art. 

Purchase Inquiry

15,500 B.C. Redux:

The Great Black Cow, Lascaux, France 

A black cow dominates horses wandering in the background.  The shaman artist painted her with horsehair brushes in pigment made with pulverized manganese rock and bone marrow.  Flint and bone tools incised white lines from the limestone; here, white stucco texture pops out from under my oil paint.  The shaman blew paint from inside hollowed bones to create sprinklings; here, cloth pats of paint delicately laced colors over a solid surface (though varied colors on the cow's back suggest peeling paint). To enrich the palette of the original stone's browns and ochres, I blended in tones of olive, salmon, and bright orange. 

Purchase Inquiry

Detail - The Great Black Cow

The white stuccoed acrylic paint popping up from under the oil paint re-creates the original shaman artist's use of etching of the limestone. The squares at the cow's feet were the shaman's earlier exploration of abstract patterning.  And that splash of purple?  Pure genius!

15,500 B.C. Redux:

Sharing the Land, Lascaux Cave, France

Media: Mixed - Stucco, Acrylic, and Oil on Panel

Size: Triptych - 95" X 24" 

A sweeping panorama of peaceful co-existence between animals living on the land.  The narrative was created through animals moving in opposite directions and images of various sizes and colors, some as superimpositions, some in the distance, for short and long perspectives.  The original frieze was painted on a smoother cave wall sandwiched between ochre- and stone-colored rocky eaves and dark craggy ledge, both created here by excessive buildup of stucco.  The piece is to be displayed in entirety, but each of the following panels (30" X 24" each) can be appreciated as a stand-alone painting.  Four paintings in one!

Purchase Inquiry

Detail - Sharing the Land 

Panel 1

Size: 30" X 24"

Stampeding horses overpower a big bull image.  Various gaits distinguish personalities.  Two run.  One gallops.  Another leaps.  The original horses were black, but I colored each differently --  red, tortoiseshell, gold - to differentiate them further.  The shaman artist set apart the bull's head and shoulder with dotting.  Patches of metal were probably imbedded in the real rock, conveyed here with paints of metallic copper, silver, and gold in the eaves and throughout, including a mysterious equid on the left.  An impala -- or unicorn?  

Detail - Sharing the Land

Panel 2

Size: 30" X 24"

Stand-out images: the stags, does, and red cow.  My interpretation attempted to recapture the delicacy of the original deer figures with fine lines and use of oil and metallic oil paints.  A glaze was used to superimpose the smaller red cow over the bigger bull's belly and legs.  Further spotlighting the red cow, a natural rock crack shooting down from the right eave onto the cow's shoulder plays like a serendipitous abstracted bolt of lightning.      

Detail - Sharing the Land

Panel 3

Size: 30" X 24"

A cow and bull are omnipresent.  Their large proportions dominate.  Strongly angled forms radiate energy.  The bull's power strengthens with brawny shoulder and hind created by the wall's sharp ochre- and gold-colored natural protrusions.  Buttressing the couple's force are the size contrasts of the tiny stag and horse overlays on the cow's shoulder and a smaller cow with calf in tow at the bull's feet, an image that seems to capitalize on the wall's imbedded rose-colored patch.  The same pink hue is also seen in the ledge's projected arch (bottom left).   

Goddess Eternal  

My contemporary series of timeless icons expressed in enduring artistic symbols.  Prehistoric fetish figures.  Animals.  Warriors. Queens.  Mothers.  Modern feminists.  They celebrate feminine power: fertility, nourishment, love, renewal, vulnerability, beauty, strength, sensuality, regality, dignity, intelligence, wisdom, and communion with nature and each other.  Through a host of media and in styles ranging from representational to abstract to Pop Art, the works come alive via designs born in primeval times but embraced today as well: chevrons, swirls, zig zags, breasts, nets, snakes, eggs, moons, arrowheads, vulvas, spirals, etc.  Goddess hieroglyphics, if you will.  Simple.  Classic.  Ancient.  But also Modern.  

White Lady

Media: Clay & Acrylic Patina Paint 

Size: 6"  X  16.5"   X  6.75"

Curvaceously chic.  This modern minimalist bone-colored sculpture pays homage to prehistoric fertility fetish figures.  My sculpture is inspired from an 8.4-inch-high stone-carved Neolithic figurine circa 5,000 B.C. called Lady of Se, so named for the Hungarian village where it was unearthed.  Contemporary figurine hallmarks include elegant elongated torso lines, sharp angles cutting prominent hips to tiny legs, and exaggerated derriere curves, sculpted with stylized shapes for side views but for humorous effect from back views on the support structure.  My tribute to contemporary voluptuous icons a la Jennifer Lopez and Sophia Loren -- and every gloriously full-figured woman.

Side View -- White Lady

A prominent fanny showcases the dramatic lines leading to the legs and extends into the support for humorous effect.  

Back View -- White Lady

Elegant back lines and strong rotund bum incorporate the support into the sculptural figure.   

Prehistoric California Goddess

A Pop Art salute to a circa 4,200 B.C. figurine from Romania's brilliant Cucuteni-Trypillia civilization.  Two panels offer front and back views of an ancient female fetish form detailed with repeated use of revived prehistoric art patterns: whirls, M designs, lines, chevrons, hooks, horns, eggs, circles, etc.  Although the black, white, and terra cotta palette recalls early Grecian pottery, this effigy specifically honors the primeval Goddess of Southern California -- as it sports the trademark bikini of a shapely, healthy beach girl.  Splashes of yellow and turquoise are my winks to fellow living modern Goddesses, as we howl together at this celebration of the eternal beauty of real women -- cellulite and all!

Bird Goddess of Her Own Feather 

Media: Clay & Acrylic Patina Paint 

Size: 7"  X  13.25"   X 4.5"

Perpetual renewal.  Such is the symbolism of the bird goddesses of ancient eras, represented here by prominent breasts with peaks of incised triple chevrons, as inspired by a 3,000 B.C. standing stone megalith grave marker some 5 feet tall in southeastern Italy.  My smaller megalith-shaped bird goddess is reborn as an abstracted contemporary female figure via a hint of tummy and waistline, pelvic jewelry belt, and curved backside with shoulders, spine, and buttocks.  Stone effects include blue-grey patina, gashes, irregular formations, and traces of yellow ochre and salmon colors to suggest other minerals in stone -- which itself regenerates ceaselessly in nature. 

Back View -- Bird Goddess of Her Own Feather 

Sculpting on the back side showcases the rough hewn shapes of a female nude's back with shoulders, shoulder blades, spine, and buttocks.  

Swan

Media: Ceramic: Clay, Slip, Underglaze, Wash, & Glaze 

Size: 8"  X  17"   X  9"

A contemporary re-interpretation of the bird goddess as nourishing vessel from the Aegean Sea region during the Bronze Age (3,300 B.C. - 1,200 B.C.).  On the Cycladic island of Thera (modern day Santorini), nippled ewers with spouts as heads and beaks were common in the matriarchal Minoan culture.  Though the ancient black-and-white functional pitchers were often slender or stout and roughly hewn, my sleek glazed sculpture enacts the elegant lines of a swan: graceful, elongated neck, head, and beak atop a diamond-shaped body with etchings of feathers.  The mesmerizing enlarged stylized eyes evoke the mysterious all-knowing sensibility of feminine intuition.   

Back View - Swan

While the side etchings capture the essence of the swan's folded wings, the back side affects a tail with handle and etchings.

Side View - Swan

The full power of the "intuitive eye" -- created with a separate pasted-on mold -- can be felt when viewed straight on from the side.  

Lilies of the Ladies

Media: Ceramic: Clay, Slip, Underglaze, & Glaze 

Size: 14"  X  14"   X  1.25"

A "rite of spring" scene inspired by partially preserved fresco imagery of circa 1,600 B.C. Minoan Crete and Thera (modern day Santorini) and then embellished into a complete original composition on a ceramic wall platter.  Two aristocratic ladies in high-status robes, possibly priestesses, join hands to bless a garden of lilies sprouting from volcanic red rock in a hopeful ritual that celebrates fertility and regeneration.  The circular plate with starry sky in crescent moon shape completes the "cycle of life" symbolism that the ancient Greeks often bestowed on their native lily.  A white clay slip layered over parts of the glazed dish and then refired creates a peeled effect characteristic of the excavated frescoes.  Can be hung on a wall or perched on stand for table or shelf display.    

Henrietta

Medium: Acrylic Paint over Clay

Size: 16.5" X 7" X 10.5"

This abstraction lauds the contemporary goddess in all her female nude glory.  Interestingly, the shapes of the negative space recall some of the ancient goddess symbolic hieroglyphics of diamonds and chevrons -- while also drawing on the Henry Moore tradition.  Hence, her name.  While the model's pose naturally created the gaps between the right arm and leg and bent legs and floor, the hollow chest was a choice forced by the limited time to sculpt.  As was the uneven molding, also echoing the most primitive of fetish sculpting styles.  

Purchase Inquiry

Barbie Kicks Male Hollywood Asses

Media: Ceramic: Clay, Slip, Underglaze, & Glaze 

Box: 9.5"   X  11.5"    X  3"    High Heel:  3"  X 3.25"  X 7" 

Pig Executive:  4.5"  X. 4.75"  X 4" 

With pointed humor against Hollywood's misogynistic big studio system, this ceramic Pop Art still life revels over the record-breaking success of "Barbie: The Movie," the 2023 feminist feature film based on the Barbie doll, a modern goddess and icon since her 1959 debut.  To represent the system's dismissive attitude of real women, a male chauvinist pig Hollywood executive holds a slate, saying: "Chick Flicks Don't Make $."  But "Barbie" literally shattered that prejudice in Bad Ass stiletto style as it detonated a hot-pink atomic bomb at the box office to become the year's highest grossing film globally ($1.44 billion).  The movie proved high heels down: truly understand women's life experiences and they will come, from all ages and countries, and in every possible hair-do. (Copyright: Jacqueline Savaiano)

Other Side of Box --

Barbie Kicks Male Hollywood Asses

This side lists just a few of the movie's box office records.  The box can be displayed on a Lazy Susan turntable that can be rotated for easy viewing of both sides of the box -- the big-screen viewing scene and box office records. 

Still Lifes

First appearing on ancient Egyptian tomb walls, the still life genre has remained popular across movements, cultures, and periods.  Arrangements of everyday objects like fruit, flowers, candles, meats, fish, fowl, drinks, books, even musical instruments might seem mundane, but they can morph into a moving experience via the artist's eye for composition and perspective plus finesse of lighting, colors, shapes, and forms.  To date, my pieces explore traditional realism and the playful Fauve style.   

Still Life Triptych

Medium:  Oil on Canvas

Size:  20" X 16"

There’s nothing still about this piece.  It pulses from the juxtaposition of complementary reds and greens and purples and yellows.  The fruit tempts with succulence created through translucent reflections.  The pot’s filigreed detail feels textured.  Mirrored reflections magnetize with two miniature paintings of the fruit in the foreground.  Shadows toy with various values.  All in all, brimming with life.  Painted during studio setup.

Purchase Inquiry

Will Dinner Be Served?

Medium: Oil on Canvas

Size: 20" X 20"

A painting in the style of the "wild beast" Fauves.  The rebellious painters who emerged circa 1905 used exciting bright colors, thick paint, and simplified shapes and forms to break from the realism that emerged during the Renaissance.  Ordinary objects of still lifes often became very unordinary due to novel Fauve perspectives on their lines and angles.  Some pieces even included animals in these domestic scenes.  This light, whimsical, stylized composition features my late opportunistic cat Max, who stole the fish off my plate if I walked away from the table for 10 seconds. 

Purchase Inquiry

Italy Landscapes

After a 10-week sojourn throughout Italy, I resurrected my more spontaneous creative self that had been buried for too many years by grief, loss, and pain.  And, as was natural, Florence -- the cradle of Renaissance art -- was the womb for my rebirth.  There, while enveloped by the Tuscan city's beauty and style, both natural and manmade, I participated in a month-long landscape painting workshop at the Florence Academy of Art.  My series of the city's glorious landmarks was executed with the school's more traditional style.  The skills refined here, however, have been a crucial foundation for leaping into other styles, the first of which was the semi-abstracted value work of a seaside setting in Italy's Cinque Terre.     

Renaissance Romance, Florence, Italy

Medium: Oil on Canvas

Size: 19.5" X 15.75"

Florence feels dreamy when swathed in a morning mist and nestled between a hilly verdant woodland and the Apennine Mountains. This panorama of the Renaissance city was painted plein-air from atop San Miniato al Monte, near the Piazzale Michelangelo, during five days of blistering 100-degree July heat.  Historical buildings (from left):  Palazzo Vecchio, Battistero, Campanile, and Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore (Duomo). 

Purchase Inquiry

SOLD - Cypress Lane, Boboli Garden,

Florence, Italy

Medium:  Oil on Canvas

Size:  15.75" X 19.5"

Cool greens and shadows conjure the calm of this famed lane of the gardens behind the Pitti Palace in this plein-air painting created during four days in July furnace-like heat.  But perspectives break the stillness and invigorate the ambiance.  The pathway leads forward and up, narrowing at the horizon, where the sky fans out and upward.  The trees and bushes are enlivened by the luxurious interplay of green hues: forest, olive, moss, lime, electric, red-green, blue-green.  And if we let our imaginations read between the hidden lanes behind the sculptures, sparks fire from those illicit romantic interludes among the nobility centuries ago.

Purchase Inquiry

Detail - Cypress Lane

Tree tops in the bright noon sunlight become a mosaic of greens and blues.  Direct rays electrify the green of the leaves.  They rest on their dark blue shadows.  The powder blue sky peaks through the openings between branches and leaves.  As the color patches coalesce, a velvety quality emerges. 

Falling Water, Arno River,

Florence, Italy

Medium: Oil on Canvas

Size:  13.5" X 10"

This plein-air painting of a pearl of a riverbank park brings back to life the richness of the on-site sensual experience.  Hear the wind rustling through the variegated trees.  Savor the sight of the river’s vibrant periwinkle and emerald hues that reflect the colors of the sky and trees above. Feel the silky fields and flowers, rugged brush, and weathered bricks in the natural garden.   All sweep toward the focal point of falling water, rushing, gurgling, foaming.  Extra sensory perception par excellence.

Purchase Inquiry

Detail - Falling Water

Two techniques further energize the water fall as the focal point.  Rushing water slashing diagonally across the mini-staircase of brown stones galvanizes visual tension.  Then the tension is released with the soft lushness of thick white paint at the fall's bottom.     

Painting the Arno River,

Florence, Italy 

Medium:  Oil on Board

Size:  11.75" X 15.75"

Painters like my friend Maureen and myself were drawn to this site for its composition potential.  I went with the flow of lines of energy to unite this piece. Paths stretch forward.  Fields reach upward.  Trees curve inward into a figure eight-shaped frame that zooms in on the bridges and trees in the horizon.  And, of course, “a river runs through it,” to quote author Norman Maclean.

Purchase Inquiry

Detail - Painting the Arno River

Each tree has an individual character.  This tree lived and breathed from regular shifts in the wind and sunlight during plein-air painting.  Gentle waves of air swirled the leaves every which way to expose the trunk and inner branches.  The outer green leaves looked a light lemony yellow under the brightest rays.

Purchase Inquiry

Storm, Vernazza, Italy 

In this value painting, the strong palette strokes applied quickly and spontaneously release the passion and aliveness of a storm -- not to mention my own Italian temperament.  This dark and turbulent interpretation was extrapolated and abstracted from a colorful view of water splashing against large black rocks jutting out of an azure Tyrrhenian Sea off the sun-drenched town of Vernazza, one of five among Italy's northwestern Cinque Terre region.  But this scene could be of any seaside location -- or simply an abstract painting.  Rotate it around and it changes. . .yet still engages.

Purchase Inquiry

Fauve Style

The French painters who emerged circa 1905 were labeled the "wild beast" Fauves because critics saw their style as rebellious.  With Fauve movement founder Henri Matisse as inspiration, they used bright, saturated colors, thick paint, and simplified shapes and forms to break from artistic tradition and open the door to 20th Century modern art.  Fauve works celebrate the joys of everyday life via whimsical landscapes and domestic settings -- including, at times, animals! My series spotlights my Fauvorite beasts -- cats.  

Cat in Pot

Medium: Oil on Canvas

Size: 24" X 36"

An enchanting Fauve slice of the royal life of cats.  This rascal stakes claim to a flower garden in a big pot of a graceful palm -- to sun, to rest, to guard.  The piece vibrates with luscious textured paint, spontaneous brush strokes, and bold complimentary colors of red/green, orange/blue, and gold/purple.  Stylized lines and patterns frame the central figure: the enthroned king -- or queen -- of the floral jungle reigning with divine right and cattitude.  The eyes say, "This is my turf -- not yours.  I'm the boss.  Get lost."  Yes, Your Majesty!

Purchase Inquiry

Will Dinner Be Served?

Medium: Oil on Canvas

Size: 20" X 20"

Vivid pastels, stylish composition, and graceful lines lighten this capricious Fauve memorial to may late opportunistic cat, Max.  He stole the fish off my plate if I walked away from the table for 10 seconds.  I hope this piece makes you smile and chuckle. . .and reflect on humorous transgressions from your own ornery household beasts.   

Purchase Inquiry

Abstractions

Abstract art is often mysterious.  Sometimes the viewer can make out the figures and images.  Other times, the work seems like a hodgepodge of. . .whatever.  The beholder's reaction is fundamental, however. Curiosity? Joy? Disgust? Smiles? Analysis? Calm? Energy? Intrigue? The artist provokes the response by coalescing elements of the abstract visual language of line, shape, form, value, texture, color, and pattern.  My series to date is more conceptual than amorphous, arousing thought, conversation -- and even laughter.  

Prehistoric California Goddess

A Pop Art salute to the Goddess.  Two panels offer front and back views of an ancient female fetish form detailed with repeated use of prehistoric art patterns that are also contemporary in their simplicity: whirls, M designs, lines, chevrons, hooks, horns, eggs, circles, etc.  Although the black, white, and terracotta palette recalls early Grecian pottery, this effigy specifically honors the primeval Goddess of Southern California -- as it sports the trademark bikini of a shapely, healthy beach girl.  Splashes of yellow and turquoise are my winks to fellow living modern Goddesses, as we howl together at this celebration of the eternal beauty of real women -- cellulite and all!

Purchase Inquiry

Controlled Chaos. . .or. . .

Some Unfortunate Pigeon Exploded by a Grenade 

Optical illusions fool the eye.  But upon examination, you can see how layering and various textures create the motion of an in-and-out spiral from a solid center.  Broad brush strokes of thin grey tones are overlayed with strong thinner black and white strokes of thicker paint.  Each quadrant varies in density, starting thick in the lower right, thinning out in the lower left and upper left, and thickening again in the upper right.  Despite the intensity, there is a feathered feel.  Are these particles shooting and floating out in space after the Big Bang? Or is this some calamity for a beautiful bird?

Purchase Inquiry

Genesis I: 6-10

What is that red form with an electric pink streak?  A futuristic aircraft? The glow of Aphrodite about to rise from within a giant shell?  Are the pink forms at right boats, sails, playful big kisses?  Abstracted landscapes invite personal interpretation.  My own?  God, a Woman -- after separating the ocean from the sky -- is beginning to form land.  Her divine light is hot pink because she is having a great time! As was I when aiming to create a real-time vibrating primordial "in the beginning" experience by juxtaposing complementary colors, incongruous shapes and forms, and horizontal/vertical applications of thicker paint. 

Purchase Inquiry

Global Warming 

A cool-colored painting evolved into a hot concept.  Although inspired by the neutral-toned rock coves of LaJolla, California, the scene was meant to evoke the Greek seaside via the memorable contrast of its rich phthalo blue sea and reflective white cliffs.  During the painting process, an undercurrent of deeper meaning flowed forth.  The rock morphed into looking like Greenland's melting ice.  The water channel began to take on the shape of giant sperm, suggesting that testosterone-driven greed has been fertilizing the assault on the environment. 

Purchase Inquiry

The Human Figure

The nude has been a central subject of art since ancient times.  My series of paintings and sculptures aims to celebrate the human experience with harmonic idealized forms and a tinge of eroticism.  Fortunately, because my models were inherently attractive, I could focus on creating distinctive auras through color palettes of choice in the paintings and stylized contemporary sculpting approaches.

Beautiful Man

Medium:  Oil on Canvas

Size:  22" X 27"

Provocative, yes.  Beyond the boldness of the bare masculine presence, this nude torso painting of a live model incites with divergent energies: the contrapose of a Renaissance statue, the dramatic light-against-dark chiaroscuro style, the feminine pinkish lavenders against the masculine grays.   As such opposites create a symmetric whole, the piece provokes again – but beautifully so.  

Exhibit Prize: Honorable Mention, “I’ll Be the Judge, “ Art Center Sarasota, FL, May-June 2015.

Purchase Inquiry

Regal Recline

Medium:  Oil on Canvas

Size:  30" X 30"

Signature colors of ancient Egypt elevate the exotic queenliness of a contemporary beauty relaxing on a throne-like winged back chair.  Her darker rich skin in a tawny palette (instead of lighter flesh tones) and carnelian-colored lips vibrate against the various complementary background blues, especially the lapis lazuli chair.  Shadowing brush strokes in reddish orange and gold along her body reflect the dancing sunlight that completes her royal radiance.  Painted during live model sessions.  

Purchase Inquiry

Detail - Regal Recline 

The interlacing of various colors and unusual forms creates shadows and brightness as well as the shapes and structures of the human body.  Notice the unique ochre-blue-green shadow of the line behind the left arm: it is reflective light bouncing off the dark phthalo green pillow upon which the figure rests.

The Future

Medium:  Oil on Canvas

Size:  23" X 37"

Major transitions are hopeful and sorrowful.  In this representative painting, the woman’s somber face and light-and-dark sides of her body capture the growing pains of stepping toward a bright future while also letting go of past burdens.  The passionate reds and purples of the palette affirm the feeling of aliveness during life’s evolutions. Painted during live model sessions. 

Purchase Inquiry

Sleeping Beauties

Medium:  Oil on Canvas

Size:  30" X 13.75"

Madonna meets Venus in this rendition of a classic nude female pose originally sketched during a live model session.  The rounded tummy hints of growing life.  The figure also floats atop a blue comforter that undulates like the sea from which the love goddess rose.  An energetic impasto  technique awakens the serene subject matter with dimension and texture.

Purchase Inquiry

Yoga Man 

Medium: Acrylic Paint over Clay

Size: 6.5" X 8" X 6"

My love and appreciation of the human body's beauty -- first expressed in figure painting -- is expressed in another form through sculpture.  The unusual twists of a very challenging pose exposed a rich range of muscular ripples of a male model.  With only two, three-hour sessions to view the model, fingers must work fast to shape the clay.  Hence, the uneven molding in a style reminiscent of Rodin.  I am no Rodin, obviously.  But Yoga Man still stands up strong. 

Purchase Inquiry

Back Side - Yoga Man 

We should all be so lucky -- women and men!  Muscle detail of shoulders, blades, back, spine, and posterior spotlights the body as a marvelous work of art .     

Henrietta

Medium: Acrylic Paint over Clay

Size: 16.5" X 7" X 10.5"

This female nude abstraction capitalizes on negative space in the Henry Moore tradition.  Hence, her name.  While the model's pose naturally created the gaps between the right arm and leg and bent legs and floor, the hollow chest was a choice forced by the limited time to sculpt.  As was the uneven molding.  Both are testimonies to trusting the artistic process to cash in on accidental golden opportunities.

Purchase Inquiry