I came to visual arts relatively late in my life after a modestly successful career as a poet. But when my writing seemed to temporarily dry up, I found myself starting to draw.
It was a time when adult arts and crafts education thrived in community centers. At the Visual Studies Center of the Children’s Aid Society in Greenwich Village, I discovered Allen Hart, a figurative expressionistic painter, who taught painting. I studied with Allen for 8 years. Eventually when he went into semi-retirement I began teaching his classes. Allen was a great inspiration, a gifted and generous teacher who encouraged me to pursue a professional art career. While working at the Visual Studies Center, I began exploring the world of handbuilt ceramics, eventually having my own ceramics and painting studio.
When a temporary health issue kept me out of my studio and from continuing clay work, I discovered, via Joseph Osina, Manhattan Graphics Center and studied monotype with him. He encouraged me to pursue etching with Vijay Kumar and immediately I was hooked. Since 2007, I have taken classes at MGC. After the loss of my own studio in 2013 and limited space for my painting in my apartment, Manhattan Graphics has become my art home with its amazingly supportive community of fellow artists. Besides appearing in various group shows and another solo show of prints at MGC, I have exhibited paintings at the Chase Manhattan Bank and the Gallery at the Philip Coltoff Center at Greenwich Village. Earlier one-person exhibits were at the New York Theological Seminary in Manhattan and Aquasource formerly in Soho, The Broome Street Gallery. Group shows include ones at The Elsa Mott Ives Gallery, The Cabrini Gallery in Dobbs Ferry, New York, Barnes and Noble at Citicorp, the Multi-Media Arts Gallery, and various Greenwich Village and Tribeca restaurants. My work is in private collections in France, London and Italy, as well as in the United States.