My passion for oil painting started as a child when I spent time painting with my grandmother, Elizabeth Seavey, an artist living in Cape Neddick, Maine. After earning an engineering degree from Cornell University and working and living in Australia and Japan, I feel that I have returned to my roots here on the Seacoast. I have been studying with Pamela Dulong Williams since moving here nine years ago.
For me, painting is about "defamiliarizing" - dislodging the veil of perceiving what I think I know and instead really noticing what is in front of me here, now, in the gift of this fleeting moment.
"After all, we surely know that to be alive among things is a gift; yet it’s a gift we so often fail to unwrap. To defamiliarize it is to unwrap it, so we no longer see what we already know or believe but rather see directly, or less indirectly." - Henry Shukman
The world is so much more than we normally perceive in our limited habitual way of looking at it. Through my art I try to expand my perception and see the freshness in every moment.
When I paint I try to keep in mind the wise words of artist Robert Henri – “The end will be what it will be. The object is intense living, fulfillment; the great happiness in creation.”