I have always had a fascination with the city. My father took me on the "streetcar", also called a trolley, to downtown Pittsburgh throughout my childhood. Those early years were the beginning of a lifelong relationship with the "cityscape". Pittsburgh is a city of bridges much like New York. The streetcar crossed over the Monongahela River on a very long trestle and delivered us into a wondrous world of sights and sounds which I can still recall today.

New York is my adopted city. I've lived here for 37 years. I love the city at night. I've toured around Central Park at night on my bicycle. I've walked home from the upper East Side to Greenwich Village. I've spent many evenings on the roof of my building observing the skyline and the phases of the moon. My Art is based on my personal experience. I refer to my work as "my version of New York". That is what it is. The way I see it and feel it. Much of what I paint comes from feelings rather than facts. I do paintings of Greenwich Village, but even then I love to indulge in the freedom of creating my own reality as in paintings of Central Park at night or perhaps etchings like "Dreaming" or "At Random" which conjure up a feeling of the surreal. In any sense, I am caught up in the magic of what the city brings out in my work. It's a wonderful odyssey.

                                — John Dorish