My most recent paintings are small (the largest is 14" x 17") and worked into sketchbook pages or bound books. And each new entry on my blog, "A Small Fine-Arts Sketchbook," is a piece of a longer story, unfolding with paint and ink along with words. My previous "Odalisque Series" -- nudes taken from well-known works by Ingres, Van Gogh or Matisse, or sketched from life -- were outlined over a base of abstract work. I play with figure and ground, color and line, the studio model or organic shapes and a foreign landscape against straight lines. I paint the world I have experienced against the world I imagine, and this duality has, I believe, the promise of real power. I have lived in locales with radically different light: upstate New York, the island of Malta, and the green fields of Normandy, France. I am now in Northern California, yet another kind of light, moderated by fog, a white-washed sunlight, and the ocean.