I always wanted to be a painter. I’ve been to quite a few of the world’s distinguished museums — Matisse, van Gogh, Renoir, Manet, Picasso, Kokoschka — Wow!

In nursery school, after a finger-painting session, I told my teacher I’d be a painter (with fingers or not) when I grew up. Her encouraging response imprinted my psyche so deeply that it stayed with me throughout my life, serving as a ‘shame-shield’ when parents, peers, paramours and wives forcefully suggested that I should choose a more practical, financially rewarding profession.

I’ve loved being a potter for over 45 years, of how it’s allowed me to explore clay’s varied means of expression, from the beginning stages to becoming the master of the medium I am today. My determined love for color defined my work in a manner other’s thought impossible. 

There was something missing however, a more emotive-meaning to my creative drive. I delved in watercolor, as well as painting with oils, finding both artistic avenues too slow for my nature, whereas with photography it manifests so instantaneously, and direct. Photography? Photo and graphics. Light (photo) combined with graphics (drawing, or painting) — to paint with light. Initially, in photography this meant black and white and shades of light in between. 

And then came color, as stepping vehicle to our digital cameras and programs on the computer — Lightroom and Photoshop as manipulative tools available, now. Perfect! Though the question of where to capture intriguing images arose quickly … people, cultures, nature. Awe, yes! Travel.

And so, off I went staying in hostels via inexpensive flights during the off-seasons, capturing photos from across the globe, and combining them into an overall theme of what I’m calling Beatnik Visual Poetry.

Occasionally a single photo will capture that which I’m seeking, otherwise I’ll place them together into montages as to my eye and way of thinking which conveys more umph to their swing, referencing a degree of emotive, allegorical foundation, to this work — Beatnik Visual Poetry.