Broadly inspired and informed by Romantic ideas found in the Symbolist and Orientalist
tendencies of 19th century art, including the Pre-Raphaelites and the Nabis, I have
always been fond of ruins, myths, fate, and tragedy, as are those artists that I most
admire- Caspar David Friedrich, John Martin, Frederic Edwin Church, and Gustave Moreau.
My visual imagination is also fed by Gothic Horror Novels like Horace Walpole's
The Castle of Otranto, Anne Radcliffe's The Italian, The Revenger's Tragedy by
Tourneur, and of course Shelley's Frankenstein,Dracula and the entire works and
mythos of H.P. Lovecraft.
These influences when combined with a realization that in the greatest Shakespearean works all the main characters end up dead, to me are the ingredients of a great painting.
