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  I love doing commissions. I take inspiration from whatever the clients have in mind for a piece. I have enjoyed every one of my commissions because the paintings usually contain subjects I would not have done. Commissions push me out of my comfort zone so that I get to deal with a whole new set of parameters and subject matter.  I do love the collaborative aspect of commissions. I get to know my clients by what they want in art; I often see where they live, and we talk about what they want and why. I really get a...

  Q: What was the first painting of Greece you made? The first painting I did was of red poppies in a field coming down a mountain in Mykonos.  It was a year that everyone remembers as the ‘year of the poppies.’ Back in those days, we took pictures with our cameras. The red was so intense it seemed to burn the photographic paper. It was just unreal how red all the mountains and hills were. It was the first painting I sold, and it was also the first painting I did where I drew and took pictures and wasn't copying...

Flowers have been around for about 120 million years. They’ve had quite some time to evolve into what we see today. We have evolved in a world of flowers, so the enjoyment of their shapes, smells, and colors has been bred into us. Like most people, I have always been attracted by flowers. When I was very young, I saw Van Gogh’s paintings of irises, sunflowers, and cherry blossoms on a national tour of his work back in the early '60s. We went to the Cleveland Art Museum, and I was transfixed. Later, Monet’s water lilies stunned me. When I...

I was in awe the first time I saw a Salvador Dali painting. I found all sorts of surreal art in books and went to see them in museums. I was struck by how many magazine advertisements, as well as TV ads, contained elements of surrealism. This school of art has played itself out, but it is still fun. When I first started painting, I thought that at some point, I would like to try my hand at a surreal painting. I thought it would be fun, and I was right.   I live in Greece for part of the year,...

"I use Nature as a great teacher in how to paint light and shadow. Looking and seeing in the present can reveal amazing and rich experiences, which I hope to share with anyone looking at my painting."   When I first started painting, I saw a black-and-white photograph in a newspaper that intrigued me. It was of a man leaving a storefront with a heavy overcoat and fedora. I had been learning about underpainting, which is the paint you put on the canvas before the final paint. (For example, if I paint a field of green grass, I might paint...