Technique

The painting at left, "Knave of Time," was given the Colonel George J. Morales award for still life in the 2002 Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club annual juried show.

Working after the manner of the Renaissance Masters, my paintings are developed in well-defined stages. I begin by producing a meticulously rendered drawing of the subject on vellum.  The completed drawing is transferred to a rigid support, either Multimedia Art Board or an archival grade wood panel that has been primed with traditional rabbit skin glue, marble dust and calcium carbonate gesso.

In this painting, I used complimentary colors as the first layer. Areas that will eventually be green are underpainted red, those that will be red in the finished work are first painted green.

The painting progresses through the application of numerous layers, the first of which is probably the most crucial. Usually, this initial layer of paint is a gray-green mixture of egg tempera, called verdaccio.   Occasionally,  I use a simplified underpainting using complimentary colors -- warm colors under cool ones and cool under warm. It is important that the resulting monochrome image has an interesting value pattern. If the composition doesn't work at this stage, all the beautiful colors in the world won't make it a good painting.

Subsequent layers introduce first color, then texture, but always remain faithful to the values of the underpainting. A minimum of five layers of egg tempera are needed to fully develop the truer-than-life images which define my style.

For paintings done in oil, the underpainting is still begun with a variation of egg tempera referred to as egg-oil emulsion. Color is added by multiple applications of translucent oil glazes.