“Growing up in Philadelphia, there was a lot of impressionist and post-impressionist paintings. I stared at those paintings at the Barnes and at PMA from high school onwards and then was lucky enough to go Rome as a third-year student at Tyler. This is not typical of a working-class American in the 20th century. I traveled and looked very hard at Italian art from early frescos to High Renaissance paintings. I think I began to see a relationship in the southern attitude toward the color in shadows. It was luminous. I then began to study color theory on my own by reading in the library everything I could find from Goethe, Itten, Munsell and anyone who wrote about it. I liked Itten best. He is rational, but a lot left room for intuition. I began to see that color was a code and a clear system. Between reading and looking, I decided to upend what one thinks color should do. I decided to attempt to make paintings using a system based in Cennini also known as "up-modeling." That is pure color in the shadows and everything is up from there. He was actually describings frescos because fresco doesn’t do dark well. I adopted that and the luminosity of southern French color like Monet and late Van Gogh to push the emotional tone of the work. Intensity and luminosity in shadows bring a certain hyper-reality. Also, the works are based on contrast to bring the meaning and emotion to the fore. In some cases, it is the contrast of warm and cool or in the bright and dull, etc. The opposite of contrast or Harmonious or analogous color is also a big player. Green on green on green on green in varying intensities and shades and temperatures and densities also bring a strong feeling to the viewer, with the first viewer being myself in the studio. I know they are not always pleasing to the eye, but I hope they are eventually pleasing to the mind. I also allow for color ideas that come from many low sources such as Laura Ashley color theory and other places.”