I am an artist. I started my active painting career in 1991

I was a brain surgeon. After 20 years of staring at the wondrous colors of the brain and spinal cord under the surgical microscope - always fresh and detailed as could possibly be - I realised that I was addicted to color and form. Especially form in motion - the reflected pulsations of the far away heart echoing in the gentle wavelike motion of the human brain. I also came to understand that I had gathered a considerable knowledge base in the artistic side of things after having lived for years in the SoHo neighborhood of New York during the time of the end of abstract expressionism and the explosion of graffiti street art, neo-expressionism, pop art, neo-geo scultpure, and photorealism. Through local artists friends I met quite a few of the personalities who would soon become enormously popular and successful, such as Basquat, Schnabel, Raushenberg, Jasper John and others. Over time I had built up (unknowingly) a pretty biased view of what I saw as art or not-so-art. More importantly, I became tantalised by both the technical prowess and sheer force of will that kept these artists going.

Starting in 1987 I spent 3 years attending classes at the Art Students League, learning how to transform my experiential knowledge of human anatomy into breathable form. After thinking about it and reviewing different mediums, I finally decided to paint in oils. Why? They have the vibrance and depth of color as well as the moist physicality which reflected what I knew best in terms of real-life anatomy. In 1991, I spent 6 weeks learning all that I could about the chemistry and craft of the medium, and then simply went out and bought a bunch of supplies and went at it.

My first painting ever was “Yellow Woman.” Turns out that the color that I understood most profoundly was yellow, the color of the brain. This initial experience was a revelation for me, a gift of celebration of simple creative joy. Every time I produced something that I liked, it was always a new surprise for me.

There are very few activities in life that bring renewed, fresh and innocent joy. For me painting is one of them. A chance to be bold, go for the colors and tell a story: Painting as a narrative. How much more fullness of life could one otherwise achieve?

My interests are in the exploration of  color and the development of a narrative with both color and content. I am not interested in a particular style (“Style-no-style” a la Musashi, the Japanese Ronin swordsman), but rather telling a story as it seems to be, in the format that tells it best. (Other than the yellow woman series).

I been working again at the start of Covid in Brighton, London, and the Ashdown Forest in England, and then in Barcelona, Spain, and now on Westhampton Beach in New York.