My acrylic paintings on canvas are about the way that human beings express their love for one another, as well as the way they commune with their environment. Most recently, because my interest has been in expressing the poetic bond between human beings and the earth, I have been incorporating actual earth elements, such as adobe earth, pine needles and anthill pebbles into some of my acrylic mediums. These "Golden" brand mediums seal the materials permanently into the paintings, and give them archival value. They can be cleaned easily with a soft brush, or with a wet, lint free cloth. If you want to test the surfaces, feel free to touch them.

As a boy raised in southern France, I was attracted to, and influenced by, the paintings of Picasso, Chagall, Rouault, Matisse and Modigliani. Later, during fifteen years in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, I was influenced by the magical realists in both my painting and my writing. I came to see myself as a "fabulist." I continue to share the fascination of certain contemporary artists for the archetypal human drama, even as I explore forms and textures that the new opaque, translucent and transparent acrylics make possible.

My career as an artist has run parallel with a career in writing fiction, as well as being contributing editor and lead essayist on art for THE, Santa Fe's Monthly Magazine of the Arts for seven years. I began as a graphic artist in 1971, doing the cover painting and 17 illustrations for my first novel, Tales of a Dalai Lama, and have done the jacket painting for two other books. (All my books are available through Amazon.com.)

While I have been immersed in, and have written about, various spiritual traditions, I see my painting less as "spiritual" than as spirited. Living as I do in a little Hispanic village at 8,500 feet in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains near Taos, New Mexico, I love the way that the sacred can be found in the commonplace, the divine in the ordinary. I regard many of my paintings as functional, in that they are meant to serve as what I call "primers of positive emotions." Though the paintings are meant for private homes, I see my paintings as also inducing warm, happy, and transformative emotions in public places of commerce, pleasure, or healing.

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