I began drawing with purpose when I was six and have been creating works on paper ever since.  Over the years I have worked in pen & ink, watercolor, pastels, colored pencils, oil crayons, charcoal, and graphite.

Although my subject matter has varied over time, in recent years I have concentrated on black & white portraits with graphite as my medium.

The portraits are based on photographs.  Some are bits and pieces of one photograph, others are collages of photographs.  In some drawings the figure may be only a part of a larger landscape but even that landscape is carefully chosen to bring out some aspect of the person I am portraying.

My drawings are primarily representational because I believe that if I focus very precisely upon the physical reality that lies before me and am privileged to have what I "see" there manifest itself on my drawing paper, an invisible reality that rests behind physical appearances becomes part of the drawing as well.  The presentation of this mingling of the visible with the invisible is the raison d'etre for each of my works.

I am inspired by John Berger who describes the nature of this invisible reality in his essay, "A Professional Secret", in Keeping a Rendezvous:  "If one thinks of appearances as a frontier, one might say that painters search for messages which cross the frontier:  messages which come from the back of the visible. ... The act of painting--when its language opens--is a response to an energy which is experienced as coming from behind the given set of appearances.  ... Every artist discovers that drawing--when it is an urgent activity--is a two-way process.  To draw is not only to measure and put down, it is also to receive.  When the intensity of looking reaches a certain degree, one becomes aware of an equally intense energy coming towards one, through the appearance of whatever it is one is scrutinizing. ... The encounter of these two energies, their dialogue...is a ferocious and inarticulated dialogue.  To sustain it requires faith.  It is like a burrowing in the dark, a burrowing under the apparent.  The great images occur when the two tunnels meet and join perfectly. ..."