In my youth I was an avid black and white photographer with a darkroom where  I learned to develop and print my own work.  I took courses in film and photography in Amherst, Mass. and NYC and worked as a resident photographer at an arts community in Cummington, Mass.  I was hired as an apprentice editor in a small film company on the upper west side of Manhattan back when movies were made in 35 mm.  I loved watching the editor matching film to sound and accompanying older professional filmmaker friends on their shoots or living room screenings where they discussed works in progress with their friends--artists, dancers, teachers, doctors, poets.  Of course it wasn’t all good: once while editing a film segment I cut my finger on the splicer. The producer freaked out: “Don’t get blood on the film!” he bellowed. 

Later I earned the credentials to teach literature and composition, a career which took me to colleges and universities around the country from  Amherst, Massachusetts to Missoula, Montana. But eventually I returned to (one of) my home town(s) in the Berkshire hills of Massahcusetts with my old friends--a camera and an updated darkroom (otherwise known as Lightroom).  The mental and physical processes of photography are still all engrossing and a healthy antidote to the noisy chatter and clatter of everyday life--bills, medical and insurance challenges, impenetrable technology, dysfunctional and awful politics, mechanical/electronic breakdowns, etc.  It is time for small miracles--a cardinal flitting onto a branch outside my kitchen window looking straight at me and me at him.

As I look at my own work I find it moving in the direction of an impressionist aesthetic--the wedding of living forms with impressionist techniques that I learned about mostly through many visits to the Clark Art Institute in western Massachusetts, especially the Impressionist room with its exquisite Renoirs and Monets.  I have exhibited up and down the Berkshires, from South County to North.