FREE SHIPPING
Shipping takes 3-4 Weeks
This ships from Round Lake Beach, Illinois. A suburb outside of Chicago.
I use UPS and sometimes US Post.
This painting is part of my Fresh Finds project—where I’ve been going back through my archives and pulling out pieces that haven’t been available to collectors in years. Instead of letting them sit in storage, I realized it might be time to release some of these works. They’re part of my history and development as a painter, and I thought collectors—especially those who’ve followed me for a long time—might enjoy owning a piece of that legacy.
This one’s called The Engagement. I painted it in 1997 when I’d just moved back to San Francisco. I was working at an elite private high school and starting to show with Jenkins Johnson Gallery on Sutter Street. I didn’t have much money, but my work was starting to sell, and the following year I got a tenure-track job at Ohlone College in Fremont. That whole period was full of transition, uncertainty, and growth—and this painting reflects that.
The image came from a fuzzy scene I caught on a VCR. I paused a movie (I think it had Rod Steiger in it), sketched out the composition, and then staged a photoshoot with Val, my wife. We switched roles—one of us behind the camera, the other modeling. I actually used myself twice in this scene: as both the bald older man and the younger man sitting beside the woman (played by Val). This was before smartphones or good digital cameras; mine saved to those hard blue plastic disks, and the resolution was awful. But I made it work.
The subject matter feels like a tense moment—a stern older guy (maybe a father figure) giving a younger couple grief, maybe about getting married. The setting is loosely based on an office or living room space, with bookshelves and furniture simplified into blocks of color and shape. There’s something about the awkward social dynamic and facial expressions that still feels real to me.
I painted this in oil on a wood panel—12.25 by 16 inches. I used stiff bristle brushes and really built up the paint surface. The texture is thick and rough in places, with a visible impasto that catches the light and adds energy. I wanted to keep some looseness in the brushwork while still modeling the forms clearly. You can see this especially in the hands and fabric folds.
The style is a mix of naturalistic and stylized elements. The anatomy is believable but not precise—I used chunky geometric shapes to suggest fingers and facial features. The space is compressed and organized in a tight triangle that keeps your eye bouncing between the three figures. The man on the left (the bald version of me) dominates the scene with his pointed gesture and forward-leaning body. Light and shadow help shape the forms, but I let a lot of the modeling come from color contrasts rather than exact rendering.
As for influences, you’ll probably see echoes of Lucian Freud in the heavy paint and attention to flesh, Velasquez in the tonal structure and restraint, and definitely Bay Area Figurative artists like Elmer Bischoff and Richard Diebenkorn in the blocky abstraction of the space. I was also thinking about cinema—how directors like Scorsese or Coppola frame characters in conflict. There’s definitely a psychological undercurrent here.
This is one of those pieces that bridges my love of storytelling, film, and figurative painting. It’s a snapshot of a moment, and also a snapshot of where I was as an artist and person in the late ’90s.
Details:
Oil on wood panel
12.25 x 16 inches
Painted in 1997
Unframed
Thick impasto surface with visible brushwork
Bristle brush technique
Signed on the front
Stored flat in climate control
In excellent condition
FREE SHIPPING
Shipping takes 3-4 Weeks
This ships from Round Lake Beach, Illinois. A suburb outside of Chicago.
I use UPS and sometimes US Post.
This painting is part of my Fresh Finds project—where I’ve been going back through my archives and pulling out pieces that haven’t been available to collectors in years. Instead of letting them sit in storage, I realized it might be time to release some of these works. They’re part of my history and development as a painter, and I thought collectors—especially those who’ve followed me for a long time—might enjoy owning a piece of that legacy.
This one’s called The Engagement. I painted it in 1997 when I’d just moved back to San Francisco. I was working at an elite private high school and starting to show with Jenkins Johnson Gallery on Sutter Street. I didn’t have much money, but my work was starting to sell, and the following year I got a tenure-track job at Ohlone College in Fremont. That whole period was full of transition, uncertainty, and growth—and this painting reflects that.
The image came from a fuzzy scene I caught on a VCR. I paused a movie (I think it had Rod Steiger in it), sketched out the composition, and then staged a photoshoot with Val, my wife. We switched roles—one of us behind the camera, the other modeling. I actually used myself twice in this scene: as both the bald older man and the younger man sitting beside the woman (played by Val). This was before smartphones or good digital cameras; mine saved to those hard blue plastic disks, and the resolution was awful. But I made it work.
The subject matter feels like a tense moment—a stern older guy (maybe a father figure) giving a younger couple grief, maybe about getting married. The setting is loosely based on an office or living room space, with bookshelves and furniture simplified into blocks of color and shape. There’s something about the awkward social dynamic and facial expressions that still feels real to me.
I painted this in oil on a wood panel—12.25 by 16 inches. I used stiff bristle brushes and really built up the paint surface. The texture is thick and rough in places, with a visible impasto that catches the light and adds energy. I wanted to keep some looseness in the brushwork while still modeling the forms clearly. You can see this especially in the hands and fabric folds.
The style is a mix of naturalistic and stylized elements. The anatomy is believable but not precise—I used chunky geometric shapes to suggest fingers and facial features. The space is compressed and organized in a tight triangle that keeps your eye bouncing between the three figures. The man on the left (the bald version of me) dominates the scene with his pointed gesture and forward-leaning body. Light and shadow help shape the forms, but I let a lot of the modeling come from color contrasts rather than exact rendering.
As for influences, you’ll probably see echoes of Lucian Freud in the heavy paint and attention to flesh, Velasquez in the tonal structure and restraint, and definitely Bay Area Figurative artists like Elmer Bischoff and Richard Diebenkorn in the blocky abstraction of the space. I was also thinking about cinema—how directors like Scorsese or Coppola frame characters in conflict. There’s definitely a psychological undercurrent here.
This is one of those pieces that bridges my love of storytelling, film, and figurative painting. It’s a snapshot of a moment, and also a snapshot of where I was as an artist and person in the late ’90s.
Details:
Oil on wood panel
12.25 x 16 inches
Painted in 1997
Unframed
Thick impasto surface with visible brushwork
Bristle brush technique
Signed on the front
Stored flat in climate control
In excellent condition
