BIO
I started out as an artist in NYC and LA, and never stopped that pursuit while doing my other work . . .
I directed, produced, and wrote the Emmy-nominated American Masters’ documentary “Terrence McNally: Every Act Of Life” (with Angela Lansbury, Meryl Streep, Nathan Lane, Christine Baranski, Billy Porter, and Bryan Cranston), and the Critic’s Choice-nominated “Nasrin” (narrated by Olivia Colman) about Iranian human rights activist Nasrin Sotoudeh. Other documentaries include “The Savoy King: Chick Webb and the Music That Changed America” (with John Legend, Janet Jackson, Billy Crystal, Tyne Daly, Charlie Watts, and Jeff Goldblum), “The State Of Marriage” (with Rep. John Lewis), “40 Million: The Struggle For Women’s Rights in Iran,” (for Time Magazine), “Father Joseph,” and “Brush With Life,” plus several short films with Amnesty International. I also contributed cartoons to The New Yorker and illustrations to The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times, wrote for The Washington Post, CNN International, and Ms. Magazine, edited and designed a book based on "Every Act Of Life,” illustrated and wrote a few children’s books, hosted an Associated Press Award-winning live daily radio talk show in Vermont, and exhibited my paintings in several Los Angeles galleries. I’ve continued to privately paint throughout this time. For the last few years, many of my paintings have featured a personal version of the Nahuatl (Aztec) rain God Tlaloc. In part, this grows out of my experience filming never-before-recorded ancient ceremonies by a Nahua ritual healer (there’s more in the mix, as well). In 2024, I also created and helped launch a global human rights campaign (#FreedomButton) that expresses solidarity with the women’s rights movement in Iran . . . and beyond. It is sponsored by Amnesty International, PEN America, Right Livelihood, Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, and The Feminist Majority Foundation, (among others). A play I wrote, FIRST AID, was a winner of the 2024 Long Beach Playhouse New Works Festival.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
I grew up in a family with no interest in art, theatre, film, or politics – all essential for me. I dropped out of college, went to New York City, got a job as a messenger at The New Yorker, and eventually sold a few cartoons to the magazine. I moved to Los Angeles at age 22, painted in a small studio, and exhibited my work at several galleries. The years that followed took me away from a professional art career, but I never stopped painting, drawing, and getting inspiration from artists (and images) I love.
Over the last two decades, I’ve directed, produced, and written documentaries that connect to human rights and empowerment of overlooked or underserved communities (in a personal, immersive way). Our most recent film, NASRIN, is about Iranian women’s rights activist and political prisoner Nasrin Sotoudeh. I’ve also kept painting whenever possible, often in multi-piece series linked by a central theme. I spent time in a remote part of Mexico still dominated by the Nahuatl (Aztec) faith and culture . . . that is part of what feeds into my ongoing series of paintings that connect to the Nahua deity Tlaloc. As the God of fertility and destruction, Tlaloc represents the balance and conflicts we face in this world and the next. Most recently, this has merged into a series of paintings about the war in Ukraine, the homeland of my grandparents.
Most of my paintings are acrylic on wood panels, with the paint applied in thin layers, scraped down, and reapplied hundreds of times to create an unusual depth of color. This also causes paint to build up along the edges of the panel (you can see the layers of paint from the side, like the rings of a tree).
I find the artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760 - 1849) endlessly inspiring. In the postscript to his print series “One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji,” he wrote: “It was not until after my seventieth year that I produced anything of significance. At the age of seventy-three, I began to grasp the underlying structure of birds and animals, insects and fish, and the way trees and plants grow. Thus, if I keep up my efforts, I will have an even better understanding when I am eighty, and by ninety will have penetrated to the heart of things. At one hundred, I may reach a level of divine understanding, and if I live a decade beyond that, everything I paint-every dot and line-will be alive.”
I haven’t hit that age of significance, and I don’t know where my work will take me, but what could be better than trying to penetrate to the heart of things?