Biographical Statement
Virgil was born in Texas in 1941 and started sketching and painting as a young boy. He has worked in four diverse career fields, including as a Special Forces officer with combat duty in the northern mountains of South Vietnam; as a practicing architect; tenured architectural professor and university administrator; and finally, as a senior executive at a world-wide non-profit organization and as the chief executive officer of two global non-profit professional societies.
Virgil has painted part-time for the past 18 years. With retirement in July 2008, Virgil has rededicated himself to fine art painting, as a full time painter, photographing, sketching and painting on a daily basis.
As a “late-bloomer” artist, Virgil is primarily self-taught. To advance his knowledge and painting skill, he has painted in workshops with a number of respected contemporary U.S., Canadian and Australian watercolor artists. He continues to develop his approach to painting through his daily painting and through classes at the Chester County Art Association. He has painted independently in the U.S., U.K., France, Italy, and Spain. His global travels, in Europe, the Middle East, Central/South America, and the Asia-Pacific, are reflected in his love of landscape and architecture/urban paintings featuring subjects from around the world.
Virgil has undergraduate and graduate degrees in architecture.
Approach to Painting
Virgil paints primarily in watercolor, but also in gouache and mixed media. He is a representational painter, focusing on landscape and architecture/urban subjects. Rather than striving for strict realism, however, Virgil, attempts to communicate a personal interpretation of his subjects, primarily through use of rich color and design. Virgil’s global travels and his love of historical places influence his choice of subjects, ranging from urban locations such as New York, Rome and Paris to small townships and scenic areas in Pennsylvania, New York, and New England, as well as rural settings in England, France and Italy.
Virgil spends hours each week seeking out, photographing, sketching and studying small townships and buildings in Pennsylvania’s Chester and Delaware counties that may often be taken for granted, if consciously considered at all.
Virgil uses these, and other readily familiar subjects, interpreting them, often reinventing them using color and an artist's emotion as a major tools. The results are paintings with strong, colorful shapes and scenes that offer new opportunities to consider and appreciate the value that his subjects contribute to the richness of life. Examples include his “Reflections” series, where buildings and landscapes are treated as reflected still-life portraits and his miniature “Shapes” series where he depicts “shapes masquerading as buildings”.
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