I lived and painted in a small fifth-floor walk-up on Houston Street before moving to Brooklyn where I still live and paint. For the first five years after graduating I made a living working in frame shops and illustrating mostly science and medical articles for The New York Times and lots of magazines. I also illustrated a book on back problems or Random House and the AMA. The hyper-realism of medical illustrations could not have contrasted more with my relentlessly loose abstract painting at the time. Even in my current work, the two conflicting tendencies for fluidity and precision battle it out in what, for a lack of a better term, is my process.

In 1983, to make a better living while painting, I started teaching art to young children, including a long stint at The Town School, a private school on the Upper East Side. In 1996, I founded my own art school, The Art Center, for children, teens and adults. I developed the curriculum and involved myself in every aspect of the business. Working with kids was more than just a way to pay the rent and support my art. It helped me to understand more my own basic instinct to make art, in a very pure sense. By watching children organize a picture and to see how at a very young age each student applies materials to the surface of their paper or canvas, I understand myself and my own creative choices better.