Biography

I was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York and was introduced to the art-making process by my two grandfathers: one was a carpenter and the other a dressmaker. They both took me to museums where we would draw together. They both had dreams of being an artist and they passed that dream onto me. My grandfathers also impressed me with the importance of service and giving back to the community. Along with being a painter I have been an art therapist and art educator. I am now teaching at the School of Visual Arts.

In 1983, I received a grant from the Bronx Council of the Arts for Studio Space. This grant was very important in my development because it gave me time and space to define my work. Another very important organization in my development as an artist has been Virginia Center for the Arts, which awarded me four fellowships, the last being in 1999.

My work has been exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the Northeast including the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Museum in Rutgers, New Jersey; and the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Artists Space, the Port of Authority of New York and New Jersey; the One Two Three Watts Gallery, the Shirley Fitterman Gallery, and the Mary Anthony Gallery in New York City. In addition my work is in numerous public and corporate collections including Pfizer Corporation, Colgate Palmolive, Borough of Manhattan Community College, and Sally Bingham. I received a B.F.A. and a Masters from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York.

Within the context of abstraction, I am constantly inventing a new vocabulary that employs gesture, form, and notation and uses the intensity of color as a mystical guide. The gestures that unite and energize my work have become increasingly more calligraphic and address a language that is private, intense and consistently self-referential.