As a painter, my goal is to use color, composition, line, and/or implicit allusion to get the casual viewer to engage with the work and their interpretations. Each of my series works toward that goal through a different set of visual elements.
While I enjoy rendering landscapes and people, I am most compelled to compose non-objectively, because of the freedom it gives the painter and the interpretive power it gives the viewer. Two of my earlier series (Appreciation and Color Abstraction) are totally non-objective. More recently, I’m pursuing 24”x 24” compositions, not titled as a series, inspired by “Suprematism” championed all too briefly by Kazimir Malevich and his contemporaries.
My painting on wood panels takes advantage of the rigidity and smoothness of the surface: by loading the painting with impasto or layers of clear medium; by painting as thinly as possible to eliminate the third dimension on the surface; or by combining both great texture and flat surface in the same composition. The Divoc series are abstractions on 12”x 12” panels, each reflecting some aspect of the isolation and fear caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The MBTW series currently comprises twelve 36”x 36” canvases painted using only Mars Black and Titanium White pigments. By eliminating the associations of colors and their juxtapositions, I can emphasize the non-objective nature of the compositions. Associations abound nonetheless, derived from the interweaving of positive and negative spaces.
In figurative paintings, I bring playful (or at times wry) animation to landscapes, waterscapes, portraits, and even inanimate objects. One of my goals is to bring a little more color to people’s collections by focusing my portraiture on African Americans.
“The Impossibility of Knowing” refers to the strength of memory and imagination, compared to what is “real” or “observed.” In these paintings, a solid shape or silhouette interacts with its mirrored outline: something that seems substantive is augmented with its mirror, shadow, or luminescence. The interplay creates dynamism, as each shape is pulled in its opposite direction.
The Faces of Evil portray men who personify Evil, identified textually by only an initial. How can a clearly human face manifest evil?
Each of these works uses acrylic paint (and other acrylic media) on canvas. For figurative paintings, I often use mediums that extend drying time to allow wet-on-wet blending.
A common question from a viewer to an abstract artist is “Is that a …?” Invariably, the artist smiles silently, offering nothing. As a painter, I understand several reasons for the silence:
1) What the piece looks and feels like to each viewer is much more important than anything I was thinking or wanted to evoke.
2) I’ve heard fascinating interpretations from viewers, following my silence, some of which change the way I view the piece I painted.
3) Some of the origins of a piece are purely formal, such as a goal of juxtaposing particular colors, of combining surface treatments and textures, of implying three dimensionality.