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After withdrawing from Parsons School of Design (New York) in 1994, I drifted into interests other than the visual arts. Aside from the occasional commission, sometimes years would pass before I would pick up a pencil to draw. I remained unconvinced of the merits of pursuing a lifetime of art-making. As I was not a believer that "expression" was a pursuit as worthy as "seeking understanding" in life. And without "understanding", I thought, what is there worthy of expressing? And what's the point?

About ten years later, in 2005, after years of searching for answers to questions that were becoming increasingly impractical, I circled back to my roots. Roots of a childhood where art was a centerpiece on the mantle of identity, as the thing for which I was always acknowledged. Roots that whispered of a family lineage of artistic talent mostly squandered for generations branching from the United States into the hazy distances of northern Italy, and a cloudy past I do not know. Yet from this faded ancestry, a few telling artifacts survived, a few paintings and drawings hung on the walls, like persistent voices that speak of legacy, like signposts pointing backwards ... and forwards.

I decided to paint again that year, in mid-2005. In fact I determined to paint. And in so doing, my work would encapsulate my time and me. It would reach inward, outward, into this historical period and beyond it. I proceeded to paint fueled by a desire for art to be like a cell in the great organism of Life, from which I felt apart-- both integral to its being and a vehicle for discovering purpose, for finding a voice.

The question for me became: How may I transmute the actual conditions of my life into an alchemy of images?

In the beginning I looked at the world, as it swirled around me. Its motion is energy. Its lifeblood is oil. Motor Oil circulates through the engines of the world which transport lives, enable global commerce; and used motor oil is a by-product of vast processes both human and geological, I thought. Motor oil would become my metaphor for this time in world history: evoking the economic, political, social-- even psychological-- realities of today. A product of billions of years and great geological forces, petroleum is the energy foundation of modern civilization. And perhaps our over-reliance upon it ... a potential catalyst for demise. But between the beginning and the end, there is paper. And on that paper I daubed a brushful of used motor oil.

My sketchbook of the time records the moment I conceived of painting with "car oil." That moment was a turning point that opened a floodgate of ideas. The medium of "used motor oil" became a sort of passageway, through which I took a first step in my personal re-dedication to a life of art.

Today I continue to recycle used motor oil into paintings, as one medium amongst others in my work. A life's work now, that continues to seek the fundamentals, through a journey of expression.

Burning Monk

2008
acrylic on canvas
183 x 122cm

Giant-Slayer (after Donatello's David)

2008
acrylic on canvas
183 x 122cm

Guardians of Spectrum

2008
acrylic on canvas
122 x 183cm

Mars

2008
acrylic on canvas
91 x 61cm

Sol, Amen

2008
acrylic on canvas
183 x 122cm

Warrior Politics

2008
Used Motor Oil Mixed Media
56 x 76 cm

Color in the Mind's Eye

2008
motor oil mixed media
56 x 76 cm

Field

2009
oil on canvas
41x51cm

the Giant

2009
oil and acrylic on canvas
70 x 51 cm