I was seduced the first time I saw the mountain crowned with clouds, the two vast oceans and the glimpse of beaches obscured by pine trees. As I drove down the the mountain road to the city below I wished for this landscape to forever be imprinted on my retina. I was in love, not only with the young man sitting next to me but with a scenery utterly different from the muted and gentle English landscape of my youth. Although it has been forty years. since I left South Africa, my experiences there have never left me. When I arrived in Cape Town in 1967, I was dazed by the clarity of the African light. Color became of paramount importance and I was fascinated by the emotional qualities of color described in Kandinsky's book "Concerning the Spiritual in Art".  I experimented with equating color with emotion in order to explore abstraction. I was inspired by many literary sources and slowly found that I was best able to express myself through more figurative or realistic images. I have continued to paint in this vein whether living in Chicago, New Orleans or New York. In South Africa I was enchanted by the tableau of lawn bowlers absorbed in their weekly ritual and embarked on a series of paintings. Years later I was delighted to discover a bowling green in Central Park. "Summer In Central Park" was a mirror image ; same scene, different continent. Although unintentional, my paintings have become a memoir of sorts, mapping and recording my experiences. They are elegiac, a tribute to time past.  But they are also hopeful and jubilant and continue to chronicle the people and places that I love.