…….Artist's Statement
…….From the day I stepped out of undergraduate school in 1974 until
…….the present day, I have been addressing the same issue: "the big
…….picture". What is the nature of this vast universe we inhabit? Is it
…….intelligently ordered, or is it simply the result of random events?
…….I have used reading, observation, life experience, and the medium
…….of painting to explore these issues for over forty years. The work
…….is not so much a statement of "this is the way it is" so much as it is
…….a question such as "could this be a possibility"?
…….I have always worked almost exclusively with acrylic on canvas, or
…….occasionally on masonite or paper. I have always worked using
…….unconventional methods, as well. This has not been for purposes
…….of being different for different's sake, but in order to express what
…….I want (need?) to express. Somehow, traditional brush on canvas
…….has never been adequate to express what I want to express.
…….Consequently, I have made it a habit over the years to play with
…….paint in order to learn more about what it is capable (and not capable)
…….of doing. This has led me to paint on glass, then transfer that paint
…….into "paint assemblages", extrude paint from modified syringes
…….creating webbed paintings that resemble bent, colored wire, and
…….most recently, to sling paint from ultra-fine straight pins, at very high
…….speed, onto canvas. The mark created by doing this drew me in
…….because of its inherent energy. It is the visual embodiment of energy.
…….It literally screams "string theory".
…….Beginning around 2006, I used this mark to create images of "the
…….universe of mind and spirit" as I envisioned it, inspired by images of
…….the physical universe produced by the Hubble space telescope.
…….I worked for several years to refine these, especially the spatial
…….aspects, then moved on to a series of radiant "figures" set against a
…….web inspired by the distribution of galaxies and galaxy clusters in the
…….early universe. (A web, I might add, that looks remarkably like the
…….web of neurons in the brain.) All through this period, I wondered about
…….mixing color optically with the fine skeins produced by this mark and
…….eventually began a series to explore the matter. This series, which
…….I am still currently working on, is, on one level, simply an exploration
…….of the colors that can be mixed in this manner. On a deeper level,
…….however, it is still dealing the same issue I've always dealt with, just in
…….a more abstract idiom. I see at least eight more paintings in this series.
