Democritus Painting

Because I have always travelled, I get asked a lot about where I’m from, & for the same reason, the answer has become more complicated the older I get. I was born in L.A. but left there when I was just two years old. Before I started school at six, we had lived in a few countries from Morocco & Malta to Sicily & Italy. Not because my dad was a military man, but because he was a painter. A crazy one, I guess! It seems I was unable to stop the momentum once I was old enough to decide for myself & have travelled ever since. I have lived in places from Thailand & India to the range of Europe’s latitude, from Scotland to the south of Spain. Presently, I live in New York with my new wife—my first wife & best muse—but we have a house in Granada, Spain, as our other base. I have recently finished my doctoral dissertation & hope to defend it this year. The years I have spent researching & writing it have been a period of deep learning despite the long experience as a painter I have behind me. My thesis is about Rembrandt’s materials & techniques. People have been trying to figure out Rembrandt’s sorcery (as van Gogh called it) for 400 years. Sir Joshua Reynolds, for example (it was discovered in 2014), bought paintings by Rembrandt & subjected them to scrapings & dissolving solutions to try to figure out their secrets! But it has not only been a study of Rembrandt, I have also taken the great deal of laboratory testing of materials done in these last 20 years to the next & final step: Using these discoveries to emulate Rembrandt’s effects in my own painting. After a long process of experimentation, I did a series of freehand copies of Rembrandt’s paintings. It is one thing to appreciate the sensitivity of Rembrandt’s work, & another to try to do the same. What this process has taught me is a revolution for my own work. Indeed, looking closely at Rembrandt’s work year after year, has not only let me learn something of his magic, but has changed the way I see the world. I am primarily a painter in oils like my father & mother before me. My work is representational & usually figurative, but with a strong tendency to expressionism. I am interested not just in the image, but the variety of brushstroke that gives the paint a textural presence that is in itself expressive.