I paint to exalt the experience of a creative force within us and enfolding us, which forms the images of intelligible meanings leading to Self-knowledge.
Paul Klee wrote, “art does not render the visible, art renders visible.” (Creative Credo, 1920)
In light of the meaning Klee expressed so well, my paintings can be seen as images of Self-discovery reflecting such archetypal themes as duality, isolation and metamorphosis.
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The Figures portfolio includes the latest work. I paint in a spontaneous manner whereby human forms are found in ethereal color washes. I also paint figures from preconceived mental images—like lucid dreams, memories, etc. In each a different way I strive to describe some facet of this experience we call human.
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The Wildlife portfolio includes samples from a series of paintings made in response to the Gulf Coast Oil Crisis of 2010. After witnessing the devastation of the Louisiana coast, I drove west to a retreat in the redwood forest of Northern California.
While living in solitude beside a lake, it occurred to me that before the first man-made mirror, water was the primordial mirror. I then asked myself two questions “What does our water reflect upon us today?” and “Can we see ourselves in the animals that live in greater harmony with water?”
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The Birds and Flowers portfolio includes samples from a series that was mostly executed between 2007 and 2009. Birds began to appear as I started painting with watercolors on papers from Japan and China.
Most of the birds and flowers demonstrate a manner of painting that developed during experiments with color washes on thin handmade paper, when the interaction of layered pigment suggested the image of a bird. Instead of representing nature or a preconceived mental image, an image emerging through ethereal color washes was spontaneously realized.
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The Early Work portfolio includes samples that predate the watercolors and were among the five selected for the graduate thesis exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in the spring of 2006.
For the exhibition, each artist was invited to write a personal statement for their work. I said my work was, “a testament to the individual’s isolation and struggle to overcome discord.”