One of the true loves of my life is drawing and painting people. Usually I paint people involved in activities common to all of us – reading, crossing streets, eating lunch. My goal is to produce a picture which the viewer can easily identify with, something that looks like it could be part of his or her world.

Occasionally people ask me how I go about painting a picture and they are usually surprised at how much preliminary work is involved. My major paintings evolve through a number of steps. It is only after thumbnail roughs, a black-and-white rough, a color sketch and a full-size, detailed pencil drawing that I am ready to begin the actual painting. There are other more direct methods of painting that I enjoy working with in other media. However, there is much more to painting than method and technique.

Many early societies believed that an image of a subject had the power to capture its spirit. That is exactly what many artists, myself included, are trying to do. When I am able to capture the spirit of the subject I am painting, I have a picture that can speak to the soul of the viewer. And that’s what art is all about.