"Without art, we’re robots. We’re automatons without senses. Paintings, film, literature, they’re all essential."

CHASE was born in Kansas City, Kansas in 1947. He attended the Kansas City Art Institute and later, Albany State College. "My dream, which never altered or waned, was to be a painter… or an actor or a playwright." Seminal influences included Picasso, Van Gogh, Matisse and Jackson Pollock.

An automobile accident derailed his art studies and after a four year tour with the military, Chase returned to school and earned advanced degrees in Mathematics and Business, followed by marriage and fatherhood and a 27 year business career.

During this period, Chase’s inclination was always to remain active in the arts. He continually sketched, creating thousands of drawings, in addition to writing and exploring museums. “I've been to hundreds around the world. The MOMA, the Musee d'Orsay, the Picasso Museum are always my favorites.” Chase says.

Three years ago, he retired to Paris to pursue his childhood ambition in the city he’d fallen in love with during a visit some thirty years before. This period has become his most prolific to date. The joy of finally "living his dream" is obvious in this recent collection of abstracts, landscapes, nudes and still lifes.

"Each style requires a different approach and palette," he explains, while admitting a partiality to hot, vivid, "clean" colors -- the influence of his early artistic heroes. “I love the colors of Matisse and Van Gogh. Still lifes are fun to do, especially the way that I do them with weird non-logical forms and shapes.”

Chase is currently trying out yet another style of nature morte, inspired by a recent retrospective of Nicolas de Staël (1914-1955). "Too bad he died so young," Chase observes. "I would love to have seen his later work. I’m already anxious to see my own later work."