In the Spring of 2023, I did something that I had been thinking about doing for many years – I began copying a Picasso. I did not want it to be Picasso-esque, but rather an exact copy that would look and feel like the real thing. This was not a new idea of course, reproducing paintings by the masters as a way of learning how to paint is a long tradition and I remember doing that very thing in art school when I painted a Thomas Eakins piece, “Sailing” (which is included in this exhibit). I think what is different now is that I’m not 20 years old anymore.

The process of making exact copies of these paintings at this stage of my “development” was an extraordinary adventure, generating profound insights about these artists and my own creative practice in relationship to them.