“I am an abstract painter. Paint can be controlled but I prefer chaos. I don’t tell stories or paint from life. Instead I use imagery and encourage accidents that inspire reflection and interpretation. Interpretations that are as fundamental as birth, death and hope despite despair. These paintings are visual poems and I choose not to make the process predictable or the meaning specific but simply offer an opportunity for reflection.”
My painting is improvisational, no prior designs or predicted outcomes. I begin a canvas with color, both intentional and accidental, generating a visual space from nature. I pick a random spot and start a series of wrapped forms that continue this improvisation. I am not concerned with composition or order at this point, instead welcome a chaotic and problematic surface that offers unique opportunities for resolution later on. I use a series of motifs that are not narrative specific but suggest thoughts of vulnerability, birth, love, risk and loss. I use the same template shapes but each is individually painted, specific to its’ light and spatial place. These eggs and birds for example never tell a specific story but help expand the eclectic languages of line, form and relationships in a heterogeneous display of contradictions. Amongst these elements of nature, images, and biomorphic forms I bring elements of architectural structures. It is at this point that the challenge to make sense of it all interests me. How can I bring chaos under control? How do I prevent each painting from being a surface of random parts but one that acknowledges the importance of order and resolution? I encourage accident and then order the elements in ways that become absolute and necessary.
“Craft is the developed skill of what has been done while art is the developed exploration of what hasn’t been done yet or seen before or understood already.
Craft is important to me but art is the goal.”
Painting has for centuries been a homogeneous pictorial style true to each individual artist, a way to see the world as that artist sees it. I believe today that there are conflicting and simultaneous visual conditions that we interact with daily. I want my paintings to honor the traditions of painting while reflecting how we currently live and experience the world the way it is. I want painting to be challenging and seductive enough to overcome the frustrations and doubt that are inevitable. Craft is the developed skill of what has been done while art is the developed exploration of what hasn’t been done yet or seen before or understood already. Craft is important to me but art is the goal.
When asked about my content I can only say that my life as a teacher, a father, a husband, has direct affect on my work. I listen to the news, local and global in the studio and it impacts my work. The poet W.H. Auden said, “I look at my work and I see what I think.” I can’t explain it better than that.