PARADES: These images may have originated from Baltimore’s Preakness Parade, but I painted them as if they were mysterious religious processions, questioning who was a believer and who was not.

EARLY HANDS: The Hand series began in 2005 when I looked at hands as devices of communication as oppose to holders of tools. They are positioned for sign language lettering (with hidden messages), shadow puppetry or Italian gesturing. They are often positioned within niches of New England tombstones or within Roman mosaics.

MIDDLE HANDS: I decided in 2009 to continue the hands series but now concentrate on how people commonly use their hands and how people come in contact with others through their hands.

LATEST HANDS: Well, I finally said to myself in Dec. 2010: “How simple can you make your hands?” These paintings make the hands as close to iconic as I yet dare.

WALTERS: I’m most fortunate that my neighborhood museum is the Walters Art Museum. In this series I rearranged parts of ancient and medieval artifacts from the Walters to create imagery that often addresses religion and civilization issues.

DAD\'S TOYS: I interrupted the Hands series in 2006 when my father died suddenly. In his workshop I found unfinished wooden toys that he had made for his grandchildren. They became my models for this memorial series.

PRINTS: I’ve been collecting relief prints, particularly wood engravings, for over 30 years. In 2011 I started making my own with my Hand series of watercolors as inspiration. All are engraved on synthetic Resingrave blocks.

HISTORIC BALTIMORE: In 1993 as we were awaiting settlement on our Mount Vernon townhouse, I started making paintings of pieces Mount Vernon architecture. This lead in 1999-2002 to a large series on historic Baltimore imagery as well as a four-painting set for the Baltimore Museum of Art curator of decorative arts.

SPAIN & FRANCE: Two of my three trips to Spain resulted in paintings, in 1981 and 2003. It’s easy to tell which are earlier, not necessarily which are better. The France paintings resulted from a 2005 residency in Rochefort en Terre in Brittany through Maryland Institute College of Art.

GREECE, TURKEY & MOROCCO: I love Mediterranean countries, great light, wonderful people, simulating sites. The paintings here represent trips to Morocco in 1981 and 1986, to Turkey in 1990 and 1995, and to Greece in 1995.

TUSCAN SKIES: In my 2012 trip to Tuscany, I kept a journal in which I sketched border patterns, often from inlaid church floors. I then worked out the geometry for a selected border and penciled in a rectangle for that border on watercolor paper. This created a window for my next Tuscan Sky. The border was then painted after returning to Baltimore. Each was dated twice: the day the sky was painted and the day the border was completed.

U.S. SKIES: Sky painting started in France in 2005, where I quickly learned that I couldn’t successfully paint a sky while staring at one. But I could first study a sky and then go into the studio and paint from memory. All titles are the date when each sky was painted. All were done in Baltimore except where noted.

ITALY: I can’t say enough about the marvels of traveling in Italy. We stayed in a farmhouse near Orvieto in 1999. In 2001 we traveled between Naples and Sicily. And this year we enjoyed a month in a tiny hillside hamlet north of Lucca. (The Lucca paintings can be found in the Sky portfolio.)