Over the ages, many artists, especially male artists, have been obsessed with the female nude as a subject. And yes, I too have made numerous contributions to this genre. But my particular obsession is not driven by lust. My nude paintings are never deliberately sexual. I may simplify but I never objectify the female body–my nudes simply have too much personality. This personality, however, is not necessarily that of the depicted model, that is to say, of a single woman. What I am fixated on, at least symbolically, is the essence of all women. Consequently, my nudes are not portraits. They are devout attempts at envisioning my own personal archetype of womanhood and communicating its broader significance as a source of all life.

To a degree, my nudes are based on observation. I work from a specific individual posing in an unclothed state. But I don’t just copy the anatomy before me. Actually, I use quite a bit of artistic license. I try to extract what to me typifies femininity, stylizing and even idealizing wherever I see fit. I expand thighs, contract heads, stretch hands, fingers, limbs, and necks, and bend them into unlikely, though to me innately feminine and incidentally beautiful, gestures. In doing so, I am not correcting nature, but rather conveying nature. To me the female form is nature and I use this form to express my feelings about all that is alive. 

In my paintings, both the nude and nature are of one substance, of one flesh. Accordingly, I immerse my nudes in tropical settings to suggest an environment of extreme luxuriance and diversity in which all flora and fauna thrive. It is an ecosystem of free and uninhibited growth, a sensual, pleasurable place that is warm in temperature, color and feeling. In this primordial and pre-moral garden the nude herself grows proudly like a Tree of Life. Her limbs branch out without guilt or shame and her curving contours undulate with the vegetation around her. Her fruit is nothing less than life itself. And as long as life is given, we all have a chance at immortality. Whether we glorify or deify the female form, in the end we all respectfully acknowledge our common origin.