Born: 1967 in
Northern California
Reside: Penngrove CA.,
Willits CA. and Soreze FR.
In 1990, after a time of personal
development and introspection, I
decided to quit my day job and
become a full-time painter.
Since then, I've been leading a
somewhat sequestered life and indulging in the irresponsibility of being liberated of employers.
Biography
I am a devoted painter of what some might consider "the Color Visualist Movement" and others the "New American Impressionist Movement"- more specifically, I paint in the "Hawthorne-Henche Tradition".
RELATED
1999: Merged painting studios with Camille Przewodek
The studio, "l'Atelier aux Couleurs" became an art space for teaching, painting, and selling our work.
2002: Founded l'Atelier aux Couleurs: Plein Air Painting Tours
in Petaluma, CA.
2003: Co-founded with Camille Przewodek: l'Atelier aux Couleurs: the Art Academy, "A Master Plein Air Program" in Petaluma, CA.
2004: Took on the position of San Francisco & Northern Ca.
Regional Editor for Plein Air Magazine, now known as
Fine Art Connoisseur Magazine.
My biggest artistic influence has been with my studies of the "Hawthorne-Hensche Principle" with Camille Przewodek, a former student of Henry Hensche, from 1996 to 2007.
I've had the opportunity to study with other former students of Hensche, such as Cedric Egeli and his wife Joanette, at their home in Maryland and at the Cape Cod School of Art in Provincetown since 1999 and with John Ebersberger of Maryland since 2007. I've also had the privilege of studying landscape painting with Joseph Mendez, former student of Russian master painter Sergei Bongart, in California and in Spain from 2000-2003. From 2001-2006, 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 2001, Ive been studying with Peggi Kroll-Roberts in California. To this day, I still continue my training with nationally recognized painters, as I love the process of continuing to learn, grow and advance as a painter.
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 Bogart 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 several of my teachers, 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 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. Thats what ultimately inspires me. My goal is to be a qualified 'color visualist' -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 at l'Atelier aux Couleurs, the Art Academy in Petaluma California. 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.
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