Growing up in Canada my first exposure to art was through landscapes. My first field trip in school was to a museum that housed the majority of landscape paintings done by a collection of Canadian artists in the 1920’s. They called themselves the “Group of 7”. I was spellbound and fell in love with painting instantly.

I painted landscapes as a student but then I was captivated by figurative and portrait painting. I always intended to return to landscapes just as other figurative artists did in the past such as Rembrandt and Sargent.

When I lived north of Toronto I met an artist named Tony Bianco. He was an accomplished impressionist landscape painter and I soon began to venture outdoors to paint with him. Hundreds of paintings later I still go outside to paint as often as possible. It is the purest form of painting and I never fail to learn something new about the place I am painting while observing it directly.

While painting I have a chance to reflect upon the place and the people who live there. I began a few years ago to write theses thoughts down to accompany the paintings. I hope this will give the viewer a more complete picture of what I saw and felt that day.