I have always taken the photographs on which I base my studio paintings. Visually orienting them from the street establishes a familiar, drive-by sense of movement. I rarely, if ever, edit the landscapes. I find the telephone poles, wires, traffic lights and curbside debris almost as interesting as the buildings themselves. An advantage of digital photography is that I can easily enlarge the images on a computer monitor. This allows me to see detail that I may have otherwise overlooked. It also enables me to experience an intense explosion of atomic color as the pixels expand. I use layers of semi-translucent acrylic glazes to interpret these extended fields of hue. I work almost exclusively with acrylic paint now. Plastic-based and fifties born, this once radical medium is well suited to my subject matter both thematically and historically.

Wasn’t the future great then? Those heady days following World War II when newfound pride, wealth and consumerism fueled highways and launched architecture that was meant to entertain, entice, and enthrall. Riding down a New Jersey roadway, when cars were still made of metal and sported wings, was like a trip through an amusement park. There were shiny slices of mom and pop shops served up with neon, ice cream stands glowing through steamy, summer nights, and a vast network of animated signs that spun, pulsed, and pantomimed. Getting there really was half the fun yet so many of these New Jersey diners, drive-ins and dives are now gone, threatened or in rapid decline. With an historian’s eye, a preservationist’s fervor and an artist’s hand, I now capture the past that once symbolized our future. Not just the oblique lines, organic forms and outlandish colors, but the bittersweet hauntings of all our kindred lives lived, loved and lost.