I am an artist who follows my intuition through all the irrational cycles
that it might lead me. I find truth in Picasso’s declaration that:
“I go where art takes me”. My finished paintings are the result
of countless revisions and many hours of constantly shifting possible images.
There is nothing systematic about my process and anything too easily executed
is most likely going to be altered or wiped out. I seek to get entranced
in a rhythm where every move I make comes naturally and intuitively. Of
course editing and reflecting upon my improvisational marks is just as
important
to the final outcome of the picture as the active painting was. But they
are different states which check and balance each other in the endlessly
fluid process. This type of perfectionism is exhausting and yet equally
rewarding in the many ups and downs of making a single painting.
I choose to work from a minimal amount of visual aids such as live models
and photographs. I believe in the masochistic intensity of trying to forge
interesting images and surfaces from the raw “smithy of my soul”.
This requires extreme concentration and a kind of crazy attentiveness to
every move that I make. This intensity is necessary because my paintings
are wholly visual in their language. Colors and forms are based on my memory
of looking at nature and other works of art from the artists that I have
admired. My work is representational and does not function on a conceptual
level. If a line that I paint does not please my stubborn visual tastes
then I will wipe it out and try again. I try as hard as I can to create
something that I love to look at on the two-dimensional surface and it does
not matter if it means anything beyond the fact that I love to look at it.
Yet although representation is important in my work, an objective visual
accuracy to what my eye sees is not very important. I am more interested
in making paintings that deal with a considerable amount of invention and
compositional structure. I would never go as far as an artist like Mondrian
in the pursuit of perfect plastic form. But I would also not paint as responsively
to what my eye sees as an artist like John Singer Sargent. For descriptive
purposes, referring to the language of painting is helpful. In order to
speak a language fluently one has to devote a long time to participating
in learning the laws of that language. Painting is no different. When Ingres
said that “drawing is the probity of art”
Beginning with images of Dionysian actors on the walls of the Villa of the
Mysteries in Pompei is a good starting place for a discussion on the tradition
of painting that my work follows. In these stone ruins are the remnants
of a mural depicting a young woman passing through a series of Dionysian
rites. The figures are composed elegantly in gesture across the wide walls
to create a harmonious path for the eyes to follow. The bodies are simplified
in accord with the aesthetics of Greco-Roman art. Figures are slightly elongated
and eyes rest big and penetrating in their sockets. Warm ochres and dusty
reds enliven the browns and blacks to give the color a rich rustic quality.
One immediately sees in these painted images the evidence of their influence
in the work of the big names of painting in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries; especially figures like Picasso, Corot, Matisse, and Arshile
Gorky.
As a primarily visual painter I can be influenced by any painter from any
time period without knowing the name of the artist. Painterly dialects from
the High Renaissance and the Baroque are very pleasing to my tastes, but
extreme refinement of form is something that I usually steer away from for
its lack of expressiveness.
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