Artist Statement
Over the years I have made abstract art and representational art — never been able to predict the Art I am about to make. There is one constant: my art reflects my current concerns.
Near the end of his life, the remarkable artist, Mark Rothko, wrote, “I do not believe there was ever a question of being abstract or representational. It is really a matter of ending this silence and solitude, of breathing and stretching one’s arms again.”
I studied with Philip Guston, learned a lot from him, never thought my Art was similar to his. Along with his high school classmate, Jackson Pollack, Guston became a famous abstract artist in the 1950’s and 60’s. Late in his career, Guston returned to representational art. He said his period of abstraction clarified the formal qualities he found most important. The gushy paint and funky forms of his late figurative work could not have happened if he had not been an abstract painter.
Like Guston, I see my art as continuous in growth and knowledge. The Art I make today depends upon all that has come before.
Right now I am making images depicting objects, people, and things. The stuff I make in the future may be different, may be abstract, may be representational.
By making art I learn how I perceive reality. However, reality is constantly changing. No one day of art making is like another. I aspire to exercise maximize awareness. Art-making is my contemporaneous attempt to understand the actuality of my being.
Imagination is primal to my investigations. Imagination is dreamlike, it comes from experience. It dabbles in all things that make a life: events, trauma, joy, love, despair, and much more. Our lives, and our nightly dreams, are imaginative journeys. They change from day to day.
Absolute truth is impossible to nail down. Art produces thoughtful commentary, a fluid journey that aspires to produce a work of absolute truth. At its best, a Work of Art is uplifting enlightenment.
Near the end of his life, the remarkable artist, Mark Rothko, wrote, “I do not believe there was ever a question of being abstract or representational. It is really a matter of ending this silence and solitude, of breathing and stretching one’s arms again.”
I studied with Philip Guston, learned a lot from him, never thought my Art was similar to his. Along with his high school classmate, Jackson Pollack, Guston became a famous abstract artist in the 1950’s and 60’s. Late in his career, Guston returned to representational art. He said his period of abstraction clarified the formal qualities he found most important. The gushy paint and funky forms of his late figurative work could not have happened if he had not been an abstract painter.
Like Guston, I see my art as continuous in growth and knowledge. The Art I make today depends upon all that has come before.
Right now I am making images depicting objects, people, and things. The stuff I make in the future may be different, may be abstract, may be representational.
By making art I learn how I perceive reality. However, reality is constantly changing. No one day of art making is like another. I aspire to exercise maximize awareness. Art-making is my contemporaneous attempt to understand the actuality of my being.
Imagination is primal to my investigations. Imagination is dreamlike, it comes from experience. It dabbles in all things that make a life: events, trauma, joy, love, despair, and much more. Our lives, and our nightly dreams, are imaginative journeys. They change from day to day.
Absolute truth is impossible to nail down. Art produces thoughtful commentary, a fluid journey that aspires to produce a work of absolute truth. At its best, a Work of Art is uplifting enlightenment.