Artist Statement

I regard myself as an artist/reporter, a recorder of people, places and events. In 1947 I found myself sketching on the street corners of Cape Town and of war-ravished Europe. In 2000 I find myself doing the same thing in different parts of the world. It is a compulsion to record a passing moment. A sketchbook commands respect, a degree of awe and instant communication in a way a camera cannot. It is a passport to people. In Portland sullen street kids talk to me. In Egypt I had to employ someone to restrain the crowds that gathered to watch. In Guadaloupe a belligerent man threatened to smash my wife’s camera but ran to fetch his child once I produced the sketchbook. In Italy construction workers abandoned their jobsite to pose for me. In Jerusalem, however, it took a week for me to be accepted by the wary inhabitants. Finally a child explained to another, “He’s not Israeli/Palestinian/Greek, he’s an artist, silly!”

I am influenced by Daumier and Toulouse Lautrec. The drawing and the actual line are important for me. I obtain immense satisfation in realising a situation or movement with a simple pen stroke. I hope to be remembered as a chronicler, that viewers will look at a painting or sketch or cartoon of mine and will say, “Yes, that is right. That is how it was/is!”