Twice a gallery has refused paintings from me and on both occasions the works happened to be personal favorites. First was a landscape titled “Over Here” (2001 O/C 30”x 48”). Was it offensive? Immature? Amateurish? No, it simply made the director of the gallery feel “cold”, as in chilly. I have always found it to be one of my strongest and most evocative landscapes, a respectful nod to George Innes and Albert Pinkham Ryder but it only evoked cardigans to the gallery so back it came. Maybe I should have brought it to them in summer… It did later find a home and never a peep about temperature from the collectors.

Since I tend to paint many figures and many landscapes, a gallery asked me to produce a show of figures IN landscapes. This was problematic for a few reasons, my work tends to avoid naturalism (to me at least), I’ve never been a big fan of genre paintings and if the figure is in the landscape there should be some plausible reason for it to be there. I turned to the Arcadian works of people like Poussin and Eakins for inspiration and out of twelve images produced four that I was relatively satisfied with. This was the one that I connected with most “Here We Are” (2003 O/C 28”x 32”).

“It’s too confrontational.” What?!? What the hell am I supposed to do, paint children at the beach? Since when is that a bad thing? God forbid the work questions the viewer with something other than do you think I’ll look good over your couch! I am a male painter, whether I like it or not, the male gaze is inherent in my work but at least I am aware of it and don’t apologize for it. I do, however, mess with it on occasion. The director was put of by the fact that the “confrontational” figure was clothed, and female. Really? That was the whole damned point, but out it went… Without this picture as a lynchpin, the rest of the show made little sense. The show did not do as well as anyone had hoped, tho the strongest paintings did later sell. Like an episode of Blossom, there were lessons for everyone. The gallery learned that collectors who buy figures aren’t necessarily interested in landscapes and even more so vice versa. I learned not to pander and set to work on the little icon that would change my life, “Her Again”.