My good fortune was to have studied many years with a wonderful artist and teacher, William Schultz, who passed down the thoughts of his many accomplished teachers and their teachers before them.

I became quite impressed with the wisdom of artists such as Robert Brackman, Robert Henri and Charles Hawthorne.

I also studied briefly with Wolf Kahn, once a student of Hans Hoffman, whose work reflects both traditional and contemporary influences - a virtue I much admire.

The method I use and teach breaks the painting process down into stages. The emphasis is on taking delight in sensation of such things as line, tone and color. Imagine that with our eyes we could no longer read but with them we could taste what we see.

This method can be traced back from Schultz and Brackman to Robert Henri and Ivan Olinsky and John Singer Sargent.
From Sargent we trace it back to Claude Monet. When we look at their "unfinished work," we see elements of these same stages in such artists as Cezanne, Bonnard, Vuillard, Prendergast, Glackens, Chase, Bellows and even Matisse.

Robert Henri stated that the point of making a painting, however strange it may sound, is not to produce a painting but to create the situation where there is great excitement and profound feeling. In other words, there is an order to things. We mustn't put the cart before the horse by thinking about the painting first. First we must think how we approach making art, about a point of view.