I paint mostly with oils on canvas or panels in a representational style, with an emphasis on landscapes, city scenes, and interior compositions; some of my most recent work involves more images of people going about their everyday lives. My favorite painters include Edward Hopper, John Sloan, William Glackens, and landscape painters of the 1800s. I also sometimes pick up on elements from painters as far apart as Vermeer and Mark Rothko. I use subjects as starting points to work with light, color, composition, and different ways of using paint. I don’t get much into big philosophical statements about my art; at the most basic level, I just paint because I love to paint. As I reflect more on what my work is about, it’s simply my way of responding to the world around me — the moments in time, and the people and places in my life. I’ve lived most of my life in cities, and overall have gravitated toward city scenes and subjects involving the built environment. When I approach architectural subjects in a painting I rarely focus much on the architecture itself; I don’t think of a painting as a “rendering” except insofar as I want the space to make sense. Mostly I think about taking the geometric shapes of buildings, streets, and other elements in a space, and treating them as a composition. I get a kick out of the happy accidents I come across in developing a painting – when shapes seem to “rhyme” or more interestingly, “half-rhyme.” In recent years I’ve also worked more with non-urban landscapes. A QUOTE I WISH I HAD SAID: “Why talk when you can paint?” – Milton Avery