Today, I am a devoted painter of the “New American Impressionist Movement”. My mission, as a painter, is to effectively apply colors in a beautiful combination to transmit the many moods of nature. I try to take an honest approach of painting the specific color relationships that I see to interpret the many light keys that nature provides –that’s what ultimately inspires me.
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My biggest artistic influence has been with my studies of the “Hawthorne-Hensche Principle” with my studio-mate, Camille Przewodek, for well over a decade, and with other former students of Henry Hensche, such as John Ebersberger, Cedric and Joanette Egeli at their studio in Maryland and at the Cape Cod School of Art in Provincetown.
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I also had the privilege of studying landscape painting with Joseph Mendez, a former student of Russian master painter Sergei Bongart, in California and in Spain for several years as well as with Frank Gannon of Forestvillle California, another student of Henry Hensche.
I studied at the Scottsdale Artists’ School Off-Site Workshops with nationally renowned painters Gay Faulkenberry, George Strickland, Kenn Backhaus, Skip Whitcomb, Matt Smith, and Ray Roberts. Since 2003, I have been working closely with Peggi Kroll-Roberts and Ray Roberts of Angels Camp California. To this day, I am devoted to my teaching and continual training with nationally recognized painters, as I love the process of continuing to learn, grow and advance as a painter.
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Lately, my entire focus has been to work “en plein-air” – to continue my studies with “the Hawthorne-Hensche Principle” but to also broaden my scope of learning by studying the academic approaches that were specifically derived from “the Bongart School of Art”. The commonality of these two schools of painting, is not to teach students how to paint, but rather how to ‘see’. In the Russian school of painting, Ilya Repin taught Nicolai Fechin, Fechin taught Peter Kotov, Peter Kotov taught Sergei Bongart and Bongart taught and inspired some of whom I’ve studied under, such as Joseph Mendez and Gay Faulkenberry. Hensche was Charles Hawthorne’s protégé.
Previously, Charles Hawthorne was a student of William Merritt Chase during the time of Monet. Hawthorne was influential in developing a teaching system directly influenced by Monet himself. My goal is to carry on what Hawthorne and Hensche taught their students and to further pass on the contributions that Hensche’s students have made, as a teacher of this discipline.
I strive, to help keep alive the old academic fashion of study that Sergei Bongart instilled in his students and Henry Hensche wrote about in his book, “The Art of Seeing and Painting”. The Russian School of Painting and the “Hawthorne-Hensche Principle” are both important artistic traditions that deserve to be fully explored and expanded upon. I hope to find other students and emerging painters that are absorbed in the same explorations that I am–painters that have studied with Hawthorne’s, Hensche’s or Bongart’s master students. I hope to collaboratively push these painting disciplines and inspire other students to further develop these traditions.