A painter, and a slow witness to what passes.

Most of the painting happens before the brush ever touches the canvas. The light has to be looked at for a long time first.

I paint in oils, in the chiaroscuro tradition — the way Caravaggio paints, the way Rembrandt paints, the way most of the painters I admire painted. Subjects come from the old places: mythology, the vanitas tradition, still life arrangements that any 17th-century Dutch master would recognize, florals lit so the petals carry the light themselves.

The work is held together by an interest in amor fati — the Stoic injunction to love your fate, whatever shape it takes. Paintings make a kind of slow practice of this. You have to look at the thing in front of you for months. By the end, you've made some peace with it.

I work out of a small studio in the upper Midwest. Most pieces are originals, oil on canvas. A few become prints, when collectors ask. Commissions are accepted in small numbers throughout the year.