MEDIUM oil, acrylic
FEATURED WORK
(Click to enlarge image)
STATEMENT
My greatest pleasure in painting is focusing on a scene, situation, building, or object and capturing its special character, how light plays on its surfaces, how it appeared to me at a given moment, and how it seems to invite viewing. Those are the aspects that I hope others will also see and appreciate. What I hope to capture is what I perhaps saw in a flash – the sun glowing on rocks on the Nova Scotia coast, flowers in my garden, hikers enjoying an Autumn afternoon, an ancient oak standing in a snow-covered meadow. Painting is also a means to deal with life’s negative situations, things like war and violence, illness and aging. What can we say of these and how do we express hope, resolution, and human dignity? Like poetry, painting is a means of setting down both images and feelings about the world and its amazing variety.
BIO/CV
Though having taken an art minor in college, Don spent his adult life in corporate settings, squeezing in art-making as time allowed. A move toward retirement – a period when he served as the director of an educational association – provided the time to return to painting. Now fully retired, painting is an absorbing interest.
A lifelong New Jersey resident, Don was born in Elizabeth. As a teenager, there was no greater treat than taking a short train ride to New York to visit its museums. College in Washington, D.C. opened the treasures of the National Gallery, the Freer, the Corcoran, and the Phillips. In the years that followed, Don spent time in the Far East and could explore the arts of Korea and Japan, courtesy of the Army.
Painting was a sometime activity in the years that followed until 2000 when Don again took up serious pursuit of art, taking courses at the New Jersey Center for the Visual Arts, the Somerset Art Association, and the Center for Contemporary Art where he regularly shows his work.
Don painted a large triptych, Turning from Violence, that hangs in the chapel of the Shrine of St. Joseph in Stirling, New Jersey.