Artists Statement 2024
A single idea can generate a number of paintings which then result in a series, a body of work. Because it can take a while for an idea to develop and to subsequently run its course, a sequence can go on for a long time, often years. A painting that is the first in a series will usually feel like a distant cousin of the most recent of that same series.
Different series generally share attention simultaneously, which means hours in the studio get divvied up in order to bring forward more than one body of work at a time. Some series never resolve entirely…they keep circling back and resurfacing; new solutions replacing old ones.
Any painting, regardless of which series generates it, has a specific set of conditions or concerns that are at the very essence of painting overall…for me, not necessarily for every painter. I’m interested in how things are arranged or placed within the shape and size of an area; I fuss a lot about the color architecture of each piece and how to expand the color structure to ‘plump up’ the fullness of each participating community of color.
Deliberation about complexity and ‘how much’ is the right amount of something is constantly banging about; I’m always specific about how the paint is physically applied to the ‘canvas’ and what will integrate different behaviors to create unified results.
I don’t bring anything into a painting except these concerns which makes me ‘old school’, I think. After I settle on what the subject should be, I don’t think about that again. I use drawing as a underpinning to initially bring out contrasts in value; also methods of brushing, smearing, spattering, adding and removing, to build complex/ simple painterly relationships using textures and patterns, figures and grounds, darks and lights, neutrals and saturated elements, all leaning toward finding aesthetic balance.
I try to not bring other messaging into the work - sentiment, narration, politics, opinion, or belief,. The paintings remain separate from the other swirls of life that are personally absorbing. The painting is its own living moment…..derived from but separate from ordinary, day-to-day events.
As a painter, I rely on an expansive legacy of skills/mastery, inherited from everywhere - from the 14th-century gilded icons of the early Renaissance to the indigenous rock painting of Aboriginal Australia; from Inuit totems to Hellenistic Greek statuary or Celtic Illuminations - any kind of image-making from any place or any era is a lesson. By looking back but thinking ahead, I can carve a place for myself as an artist of this particular time and place, in this modern epoch.