A painter and photographer by education and experience, I sometimes combine the two media by printing black and white photographic prints, and using quality French pastels, hand paint the prints “not to recreate the subject, but to capture the spiritual quality of the light and the essence of the subject.”  The images provide an intimate quietness, a special peacefulness while preserving glimpses of our cultural symbolism with a surrealistic pallet reminiscent of the French Impressionist painters.  Sometimes, I just have fun by testing the believability of the photographic image as a recording of the visual world, and use color to present a visual experience of color in its own terms while retaining the objectiveness of the real world.  The result is an artwork that defies what we accept as ‘a photograph’.