2025 Recap

As this year comes to an end, I want to share some reflections on the year. In 2025, I wanted to cultivate more of a sense of community, so I hosted regularly occurring events, including a book club and a sketching and journaling workshop. It was a wonderful way to connect with more people who share my love of reading and making things.

It was an eclectic year in my studio practice. I had several commissions from patrons whom I enjoyed working with. After the SS United States, a frequent source of my painting themes for the past several years, left Philadelphia, I had to figure out how to react. Plus, I had shows in 3 different states, and was interviewed by the Philly Has Heart podcast. As a result, perhaps it is easier to make one mega-post of pictures I made rather than referring people all over my website.

Commissions

I had the incredible opportunity to make an 8 x 4-foot oil painting for some lovely clients. This was daunting because although I love working large, I haven't done so since before my eyes started acting up. Specifically, I wasn't sure how I would cope with the giant expanse of white paint filling my entire field of vision as I filled it with tiny brushstrokes. It was an interesting creative challenge to invent a landscape that incorporated elements of their favorite places from different parts of the country into one painting, and all three of us were very pleased with the result.

Traditional Landscape Paintings

To get my head into the right space to make this huge painting, I made some smaller traditional landscape paintings. Some of these scenes were of Lake Belle Taine in Northern Minnesota. Others were inspired by visiting Mid-Coast Maine last September. Someone liked this smaller painting of Minnesota so much that she commissioned a 40" x 30" version for her living room. I made some short videos of the process.

I'd been meaning to make some Maine paintings all year, but the scenes were so complex and intricate that it took me a while to get my head around them. There is such a disorienting sense of space, so many textures and colors, and I had to strategize the techniques to utilize if I wanted to do these scenes justice. I used a lot of translucent pigments, which meant that I had to be especially intentional about where I placed the colors since if I want a vibrant blue patch of water, but I've already painted some golden kelp in that area, I'm going be be stuck with green in a place I didn't want it.

Click to enlarge and view titles. I've included links within each photo to a shop page, though not all available work is listed in my shop. If you see something that you like in my portfolio, contact me.

Ceramics (Portfolio) (Shop)

I also returned to The Clay Studio and made some ceramic wall pieces as tactile companions to this series, which was an interesting way to grapple with the craggy geology. I've always thought two-dimensionally since my right eye developed abnormally, so I've never had stellar depth perception or spatial reasoning. Working sculpturally presents an intriguing creative challenge, and branching into an entirely new medium has been exciting. Plus, art that is intended to be touched is accessible to blind and visually impaired people, and everyone secretly wanted to touch my textured paintings anyhow. (I also made more ceramic ships.)

(Click to enlarge and view titles.)

What should I do next?

Meanwhile, the SS United States had been towed from Philadelphia to Mobile, Alabama where she is currently being remediated in preparation for being sunk as an artificial reef off of the coast of Destin, Florida in 2026.

I was facing the question of whether or not I should stop painting her now that she is gone from Philadelphia. Should I stop painting her when she's no longer afloat? There's a case to be made for creating a limited series, both conceptually and economically.

Every work of art is a value judgement. Its existence signifies that I have allocated the time, effort, and resources to create it. I've decided that the SS United States is something that deserves to be contemplated and celebrated, or in this instance, memorialized. Should I paint something because I think there's a market for it, or because it is the most interesting idea even if there's no guarantee the painting will turn out well or that anyone will like it? These are annoying things to worry about, but we've all got to pay the bills.

Go have fun, dang it!

The best thing to do when I'm stuck is to go on a field trip or do something just for fun, so I did some plein air painting with some friends at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. My favorite discovery wasn't a ship at all. It was The Goldfish Basement! This flooded warehouse is home to a flourishing school of feral goldfish that swim in and out of its rusted doors. I was absolutely delighted. The day I visited, the reflection made it appear that these brilliant orange fish were swimming through the sky, like dirty magic. It was disorienting and fascinating, so of course I had to paint it more than once. The building is at South 12th Street and Kitty Hawk Avenue in Philadelphia if you want to see for yourself. Keep in mind that the time of day and weather will impact the reflection.

(Click to enlarge and view titles.)

Revisiting Earlier Themes

At this time, I was also having renewed interest in my older series "Landscapes With Interjections," in which I made collages from photos I had taken, then used the collages as reference material for paintings. I exhibited some of these pieces in the show "Shoreline" with Leslie Giles and Geo McElroy at Jo Fleming Contemporary Art in Annapolis, Maryland. Here is a recording of my artist talk.

Revisiting this older series made me want to introduce more collage-influenced elements into my paintings of the SS United States. I took hundreds of pictures during the three times I toured her, and flipping through them endlessly on my computer gave me a discombobulated sense of space while trying to reconstruct the ship from memory. I started exploring this in the painting "Walking Arch" I made in late 2024, and recently completed its sibling, "Walking Arch (Both Sides Now)."

Structures

While making the Goldfish Basement paintings, I kept thinking a quote from musician Regina Spektor: "Things I have loved, I'm allowed to keep." I decided to continue sharing aspects of the SS United States that most people never got to appreciate- deck views, interiors, and close-ups of textures.

Because of this increasingly architectural direction of my work, it made sense to make separate sections of my portfolio devoted to Structures rather than putting everything with the paintings of the hull of the SS United States.

I also made this ceramic diorama showing what is on the other side of the portholes. That's the actual design of the bedding on the SS United States. Here are 3 different views. I put some holes in it so that it can be displayed as a wall piece or on a table.

"Of Matter and Light" 

In November, I had a 2-person show with Robert Glisson at Novado Gallery in Jersey City, New Jersey, which got a very nice review. The exhibition showcased my newer paintings alongside their ceramic companions, which was exciting since I had never shown my ceramics in a gallery before.

If you'd like to see the rest of the installation photos, exhibition catalog, press release, and my artist's statement, they're on this linked page.

I also sold three of my geometric abstract harbor paintings at Veronique Wantz Gallery in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Miscellaneous Paintings

...And of course, I made lots of little 4" x 4" oil paintings on panel while I was working on bigger commissions and playing with ideas.

...And I reworked this paintings of the tall ship Gazela from two years ago that I thought I had finished twice before. This time it is actually finished. It is funny, until I compiled this post I hadn't realized that, other than the completion of this Gazela painting, I didn't make a single painting this year that was immediately recognizable as a boat.

In summary, after doing a lot of soul searching this year, I ultimately decided just to make things that I like. I've made enough art over the years that whatever I make is going to have some tangential relationship to something else I've explored, and that is liberating. I gave myself permission to do what I found most compelling and challenging. I feel like I can use that momentum going into 2026.