Painting istransformation.

He was drawing before he could do much else. Nobody in the family decided he would be an artist; it arrived with him, and it is still how he sees a room — the color first, the room second.

He studied watercolor through school under Diane Wallace, who taught him color, composition, and the discipline of drawing what is actually in front of you. Formal school after that was never something he could do. Being told about the work, in a room away from it, was not the same as being in it.

He went into house painting instead — his grandfather’s trade, though the two never worked a day together — and learned faux finishing from Troy Masoth: stone, marble, wood graining. I PAINT CO. started on the strength of that.

Twenty years finishing his family’s restaurants taught him the rest. A dining room cannot be argued with. People either want to sit in it or they do not, and they decide long before they could tell you why.

That is what he is still listening for — not the coat of paint, but whether the room does that for the people in it. Painting is transformation.