ABOUT MY WORK...

While my work is mainly about the formal aspects of the painting process and is largely non-representational, figurative elements appear from time to time.  They are usually surprises that won’t go away despite my best efforts to produce a thoroughly abstract piece.  As a result, they take up residence in the painting as either landscape elements or as shadowy figures doing battle with the forces around them.

My most recent paintings are somewhere between abstract and non-representational.  They are more about emotional states of being than about anything immediately identifiable.  The titles are often references to concepts found in Buddhist teaching.

In terms of process, my paintings are usually mixed media on canvas and wood with acrylic mediums used as a base.  Generally I will use whatever works for a particular painting; recent work has used primarily acrylic and graphite. Collage elements are often added, and layers are built up and partly eroded chemically or by sanding to reveal the layers underneath.

Having said this, I have to add that the paintings are really about themselves, which is to say that they are about the formal aspects of the artistic process and about the plastic qualities of the materials used to produce them.  Composition is very important, as are light, color, and texture.  Subject matter is secondary to these.  Consequently, the titles of the pieces and the subject matter are only meant as points of entry into a painting.  I owe this approach to Susan Rothenberg, who along with Joan Mitchell, Willem de Kooning, and Richard Diebenkorn have been major influences on my work.