At the heart of me will always be an Architect. But my path took a strange and difficult turn and I was severed from my profession as an Architect just as construction began on my last building as Project Architect for the Frost Art Museum in Miami. Little did I know at the time that my journey would lead to making art as my path to creative liberation.

I have a disease of the spine known as Scheuermann’s Kyphosis, a form of scoliosis where the spine curves forward. Over the years my curvature worsened to the point that my internal organs were impacted and surgery was required. My first surgery in January 2003 involved a multi level spinal fusion assisted by rods and screws to correct the curvature. This fusion comprised more than two thirds of my spine. About a year and a half after the surgery I had a rare complication called Spondylolisthesis. As my surgeon explained it to me in lay terms, “Your head is falling off your spine.” I would require another complex surgery extending the rods & and screws to structurally pull the spine back into alignment. This second surgery was performed in November 2004.

Feeling marooned while lying in a hospital bed and falling deeper into despair, Bruce Baumwoll, my partner of 28 1/2 years, encouraged me to try and create art on the computer during the limited time I could sit upright. I began teaching myself Photoshop so that I could have an outlet for my pent-up creativity. This was the beginning of an odyssey of self awareness and personal expression that continues in my work today.

I had always wanted to paint but my passion for my architecture was all encompassing. Here I was marooned in my own despair and in pain and something truly magical happened when I began learning photoshop and was able to express both the pent up feelings going on inside my head and the healing process happening inside my body. My earliest works are biological meditations on the awareness of these processes. I found myself inventing skeletal structures of my imagination. Stripping away the external to reveal mysterious internal structures became an exercise in mindfulness.

I also used the process to get my mind off my pain by making mandala like works, many of which have the effect of spinning and helped mesmerize me. I found that creating my spinning works got me closer to the intuitive side of myself. I had an explosion of creativity and the process helped get me out of my depression. Learning to use photoshop gave me a sense of confidence and empowerment. As my work evolved I began to explore many world influences and interests including Islamic art, African art, aboriginal art and textile traditions from different cultures around the world to name a few.

As my work evolved, I began creating creatures of my imagination I call WHIMSIES; carefree and unencumbered beings free of the constraints of gravity. They are iconographic symbols representing stand-ins for me. They move freely in ways that I’m not able to. I also imagine them to be peaceful. This helps me feel peaceful. My mind is able to soar through them yet I’m just sitting in a chair at a computer moving my hand ever so delicately around. Much of these whimsy works are about motion, speed and the immediacy of being in the moment.

At first I thought computer technology would be a hindrance to the kind of stream of consciousness painting that I always admired by some of the abstract expressionists painters. But I have found that I can become one with the technology, constantly adapting it to make the picture in my head that I need to get out. I use vibrant colors because I love color and I’m not afraid of it and it becomes a leap of faith to trust my intuition. Luckily, the technology enables me to reproduce the richest of saturated color.

The term digital art makes me a little uncomfortable because with it comes so many connotations. I don’t use software to make my art. I like the idea of merging the latest in digital technology with a more archaic approach to making my pictures. Being a Baby Boomer brought up in the analog world, this ‘pre-digital’ approach connects me with my past, while the digital technology allows me to explore new ways of seeing that artists of previous generations could not have imagined.