If I have learned anything at all from getting my BFA in New York and from intently studying the works of the old and modem masters in America and Europe, it is that style, even subject matter, do not create a masterpiece. It is a painting's presence, power, mystery and perhaps a touch of the sublime, which command a viewer's attention.

Two of my most significant New York teachers took me under their wing and drummed this into me. One, a Photorealist, has work in the collections of the NY Metropolitan, Hirschorn Museums and the Carnegie Institute; the other is a Minimalist and has had at least one Guggenheim Retrospective. So I listened to them.

Various other master/mentor influences inspire me. These include 17th century Dutch landscape painter Jacob Van Ruisdael, 19th century English Romantic painters John Constable and J.M.W. Turner, 19th century schools of Naturalism and French Barbizon, plus Impressionists Claude Monet, and Wolf Kahn, for their light-filled color and brushwork. John Singer Sargeant and Joaquin Soralla transcend categories to stand in a world all their own.

During the last few years I have discovered painting and sketching en plein air, and so have assiduously followed the examples of Richard Schmid. This more immediate alla prima style of painting - with bugs, high winds, and all else that weather can throw at one when painting outside - has been the single greatest catalyst to pry me away from Photorealism toward a more painterly realism, ala 19th/29th century Hudson River Landscape painters.