I’m not much of a painter. I never had the training, so it my hands don’t have the knack and I’ve never found it easy to create something from nothing. In college I painted and drew intensely for a few years, but since then my practice has been sporadic. As in my intellectual work, I’m more of a synthesist, which is why I’m drawn to collage, assemblage, and the digital art of photo manipulation.

The realistic paintings here are early works, mainly from the late 1970s and early 1980s, with the exception of one or two pieces I was inspired to draw from photographs. I tend towards realism when I draw or paint, and so I tried a couple of abstract series to shake that up. I primed the paper and layered it, and then put on some jazz, closed my eyes and laid down the initial strokes. I did 50-60 of these spontaneous works and I’ve posted my favorites here.