I've always been pretty nearsighted, so writing about this vision thing is problematic.  Let me explain.  When I was in college in the 1960s I couldn't decide whether I wanted to be an artist or a lawyer. My father worked as a factory laborer, my mother a stay at home mom, no one in my whole extended family had ever attended college and I didn't know anyone personally who fit either role model.  At the time, this seemed like a fork-in-the-road decision obscured by some serious ground fog.  Happily I eventually came to perceive some similarities between the processes involved in practicing law and making art.  In both cases the challenge is to take a blank slate with all its possibilities, make a couple marks to break the intimidating sterility of a blank sheet and then eliminate that which is superfluous. I start by roughing out an outline or sketch, as the case may be, allowing it to sit and ferment.  Then begins the real process of addition and subtraction, editing and modifying (what am I forgetting?  Do I really need that?  Is the tone appropriate?  Too dark?  Too light?  Too blah?) and hoping to stop before I smother it to death. (With drip and pour paintings the process is entirely additive, so everything I just wrote is nonsense.) When focused on the process -- whether pounding a keyboard or applying color to a surface -- I am lost in the moment and my mind stops wandering; time stops until eye strain or my aching back ends the session.  In any event, art has been an on-again off-again carousel ride in the carnival of my existence.  Most of my art-related life I focused on representational work because I believed that a recognizable image appeals to nearly everyone on some level.  I gravitated recently to pure abstract painting on a larger scale, pouring and dripping multiple layers of commercial house paint on (generally) unprimed canvas.  These works present no optical illusion of space but I think depth is nevertheless present due to the interwoven strands of color, or sense of motion, as the case may be.   That, at least, is the goal. Thank you for visiting my site.

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I've always been pretty nearsighted, so writing about this vision thing is problematic.  Let me explain.  When I was in college in the 1960s I couldn't decide whether I wanted to be an artist or a lawyer. My father worked as a factory laborer, my mother a stay at home mom, no one in my whole extended family had ever attended college and I didn't know anyone personally who fit either role model.  At the time, this seemed like a fork-in-the-road decision obscured by some serious ground fog.  Happily I eventually came to perceive some similarities between the processes involved in practicing law and making art.  In both cases the challenge is to take a blank slate with all its possibilities, make a couple marks to break the intimidating sterility of a blank sheet and then eliminate that which is superfluous. I start by roughing out an outline or sketch, as the case may be, allowing it to sit and ferment.  Then begins the real process of addition and subtraction, editing and modifying (what am I forgetting?  Do I really need that?  Is the tone appropriate?  Too dark?  Too light?  Too blah?) and hoping to stop before I smother it to death. (With drip and pour paintings the process is entirely additive, so everything I just wrote is nonsense.) When focused on the process -- whether pounding a keyboard or applying color to a surface -- I am lost in the moment and my mind stops wandering; time stops until eye strain or my aching back ends the session.  In any event, art has been an on-again off-again carousel ride in the carnival of my existence.  Most of my art-related life I focused on representational work because I believed that a recognizable image appeals to nearly everyone on some level.  I gravitated recently to pure abstract painting on a larger scale, pouring and dripping multiple layers of commercial house paint on (generally) unprimed canvas.  These works present no optical illusion of space but I think depth is nevertheless present due to the interwoven strands of color, or sense of motion, as the case may be.   That, at least, is the goal. Thank you for visiting my site.

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