My oil paintings explore the rhythms of everyday life at the beach.  I find the body endlessly beautiful and fascinating.  In my work I endeavor to find the gesture and vitality inherent in each person.  I like to explore people at rest, during play, in connection, and in solitude.

Working from photographs and observation, l use the arrangements of bodies, umbrellas, sand and ocean to compose a day in the life of a beachgoer.  Together these shapes and figures create a human landscape where people gather in close proximity, yet remain psychologically separate.  I am interested in capturing each individual, but together the forms and figures create an engaging tableau.  Brief interactions and quiet tensions emerge, lives intersect in moments captured in paint. The use of bold color relationships, light and simplified forms heighten the sensory experience of the scene,  allowing the space to move between representation and abstraction.    

With these works, I am recalling the feelings I had in my own childhood at the beach in Southern California, as well as those while raising my son, that special indelible feeling of summer.  There is a shared sentiment - we each may have our own reasons for being there, but for most we love the feel of the sand and the hot sun, the smell of the ocean and the sun lotion,  and the gentle lull or loud crashing of the waves.  When creating these scenes I sometimes feel I have come to know and like these people on the canvas.  I suppose it is the common knowing of the sacred experience that it is to have a perfect summer beach day.