There is a line in a Counting Crows song about Adam D. studying the way the light attaches to a girl...I think that is what attracts me most about doing nude work. It is not the bodies themselves I want to chronicle nearly as much as the way light attaches to them. It is the play of light and line which draws me.
As a small child I was greatly influenced by the master Yousef Karsh, (who actually came and did a portrait of my grandmother which now hangs in my livingroom). I fondly remember one Easter basket when I was about 7 which included a boxed set of blank greeting cards with the work of Edward Weston. I was thrilled. I splayed them out around me and studied them for hours.
I remember having Eyegasms over Penn's Peonie photographs. I was probably 10.
My father was a business man and an artist. Or, rather, he was an artist who put on the business man's suit and tie and commuted from the Cape to Boston every day to work for a prestigious bank. His first love (other than aviation and skeet) was art, particularly watercolors. He studied Art at Harvard prior to attending Columbia for a business degree.
We used to spend many hours examining the Impressionists, whom he adored, and Sargent, and N. C Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth and others.
I asked him once, if he could learn to paint anything at all Really Well, what would it be? His answer was: A white wall. I have spent most of my life chasing light in one form or another.
My mother worked for Poloroid before she met my father. She, too, has Magpie Syndrome, which makes for a sore neck as one glances from thing to thing, studying the play of light, the dance of line, the song of color.
It was Destiny.
I cannot add to save my life. But, I am a Very Good Friend of Light.
