During my forty year career as an architect, I concentrated on designs for buildings at colleges and universities. In such places, an architect almost never designs either the first or the last building that will be built. The ways in which a new building relates to others and strengthens the fabric of the campus become essential measures of its success. As a painter inspired principally by urban conditions and architectural forms, such relationships intrigue me.
I often reshape the spaces between structures, studying how adjustments add or release tension and compression to improve the composition of the painting. Fragments of buildings and spaces are shifted or recomposed as I consider the play of light on forms and surfaces. Decisions about values are made early in my paintings, with color choices coming later. The watercolor medium itself influences the process, with the result that the colors are almost never exactly those that the scenes actually present. My drawings made in situ are quick studies, and the ideas in two or three sketches are frequently combined in paintings made later. |