Painting came to me late in life. I made my living as a corporate film director for many years and that is what I consider still to be my main occupation. Although I received a BA at Southern Illinois University in Cinema and Photography, I’ve always been interested in the traditional visual arts and I casually studied enough to receive an art minor. The Art courses I took really just amounted to an introduction to some of the various disciplines. I started thinking about painting a few years ago and it quickly became an overwhelming urge. Although my job requires a great deal of creativity, it also requires a great deal of compromise and also I must expend much of my energy realizing other people’s vision.  This usually diminishes my satisfaction. I paint to please me and no one else. So painting has become very therapeutic and completely joyous.

The starting point for this series of paintings has been Internet pornography.  Specifically, amateur porn.  These are the kind of images that are usually made and posted by the subjects or their lovers.  It fascinates me that at any giving moment, there are millions of homemade, pornographic images flying through the ether.  Once I choose an image or images to use in a painting, I do several things to make the painting my own.  I change colors, composition, objects in the scene or I will combine elements from several images.  I never focus on the likenesses of the subjects.  I like to let the appearance of the subject evolve to exploit the things that drew me to the images.  I feel that the most important way I make the paintings my own is by choosing the images from the millions available on the internet.    I want the images to be sexual but they must speak to me beyond their pornographic intent.  Although it may look like I choose the images for their shock value, that’s not what interested me. It could be a sense of humor, attitude, mood, situation or maybe a dark narrative that I could imagine.  What I look for most is beauty.    I have to admit that most of the women in the images I’ve selected, I found attractive in some way. I find the concept of beauty very interesting.  I believe society’s idea of beauty is forced on us by the media.   I prefer to paint older, plain or chubby women. Women who would be far from what society would consider as perfect.    I find these women just as beautiful as your Barbie doll types, but a whole lot more interesting.  To pose for these pictures without possessing conventional beauty, take mores confidence and attitude.  This is what attracts me to these images most and makes me want to paint them.