NORTHERN CALIFORNIA COLORIST

At 22 years old, after a time of personal development and deep introspection — following the loss of my mother, — I made a vow to live my life to the fullest and pursue my passion. I decided to quit my day job and become a full-time painter. Fast forward three decades, I’m now a devoted painter of what some might consider “the Color Visualist Movement” and others the “New American Impressionist Movement” — more specifically, I paint using the methods of the “Hawthorne-Hensche Principle.”

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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 to paint 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 most significant 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 the Cape Cod School of Art in Provincetown. I also had the privilege of studying landscape painting with the late Joseph Mendez, a former student of Russian master painter Sergei Bongart, in California and Spain for several years as well as with Frank Gannon of Forestville, California, another student of Henry Hensche.

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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. Directly influenced by Monet, Hawthorne was influential in developing a new teaching system.

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I hope to push these painting disciplines collaboratively and inspire other students to develop these traditions further. My goal is to carry on what Hawthorne and Hensche taught their students and to also pass on the contributions that Hensche’s students have made. 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 significant artistic traditions that deserve full exploration and expanding upon. I hope to find other students and emerging painters that are absorbed in the same studies that I am — painters that have studied with Hawthorne’s, Hensche’s, or Bongart’s master students.