Reflected in the water of the city of canals is the color of a landscape, in a seascape, in a dreamscape. It is an optical illusion that defies its own existence — in the water, on the water; hovering and floating. The color of this city is the history of color — Venetian red and yellow ochre; musty green and aqua blue; chalky shades of amber-orange and sun-bleached terra cotta. Peeling back the centuries, each layer is exposed. As storms roll in, and tides recede, the acqua alta takes its toll. The city and the buildings, which are made of brick and mortar, are salted by the water and transformed by time itself. The salt corrodes the brick façades and Venice is revealed. I paint this transmutation in my most recent group of paintings.

I have always been fascinated by the history and tradition of fresco painting — a process and an art form that pre-dates the early-Romans. A fresco is a construct. It is an act of fabrication. It builds itself, upon itself, one layer at a time — alternating layers of plaster, lime and paint. The arriccio, for instance, is essential but unseen. It is the first rough coat of plaster that supports the intonaco. The intonaco is the finest coat on which the artist paints. And the giornata is the final step in the making of the fresco; it is the ‘fresh’ wet plaster surface from which ‘fresco’ is derived. 

When Pompeii was buried under volcanic ash in AD 79, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius both destroyed a city and preserved a culture. It has taken many centuries of continuous excavation and laborious restoration to finally reveal the rich textures, bright colors and intricate murals which remained hidden from view and protected by darkness. These current paintings capture the essence, inspiration and intention of If Walls Could Talk: Pompeii.

Pueblos are the ancestral homes of Native American Indians — these are sacred places which rise from holy ground. They are the color of the clay soil, sun dried earth and dry coarse straw from which they are made. The line is blurred between the man-made adobe structures and the earthen soil from which they organically emerge. They are a landscape within a landscape.

Not far from the Red Monastery, the monumental White Monastery emerges from the sand of the upper Nile of Egypt, damaged and fragmented, but still intact. Built of dressed white limestone, in what once had been an arid desert, the monastery survived centuries of conflict, neglect and pilfering. Although ravaged over time, the church has also been repaired, rebuilt and restored.

‘Spolia’ is a Latin word which refers to the repurposing of ancient building materials for new construction. Art historians and archaeologists have found these recycled fragments embedded in monuments and architectural façades erected centuries after the original structures were dismantled. For me, it is an excavation of freestanding artifacts rising from the surface, not unseen buried objects hidden in the ground.

Rising like a fortress above the Umbrian valley of central Italy, the bold black horizontal stripes of basalt stone and travertine marble stand in stark contrast against the vertical pale façade of Orvieto Cathedral. It hovers on the hillside in shades of tan and green. A solid form, but light as air; delicate but massive.