Saturday

Why do I paint what I do?

Summary

My work focuses primarily on the sensuous expressions of the human form and the visual symbolism of the mystical and mysterious experiences of live. I celebrate the mystery and beauty of existence because the creative impulse has always given me a reason to exist even when other defenses from existential agony and loneliness have eroded or collapsed. Beauty has the ability to draw me into a complete communion with the moment and thus beauty heals.

I use the creative process of painting or drawing as a active meditation and with these creations I explore both the outer world and my inner vision of it. This meditation is woven into my work and it is the hidden element within the images of my platters and paintings. It is often the reason why, stylistically, my application of materials remains realistic and restrained, for proficiency and particularly surface detail demands patient extended periods working on the canvases surface. The work during this time becomes a meditative act. To simplify and highlight this dimension for others I sometimes include verse or text I have written.

I also create artwork whose inspiration and graphic design imagery is flavored by a retro mid20th century element. I try to connect with the glamour, optimism, and cool elegance of the modernist movement. And to give it a little edge, a contemporary twist, I add a dash of pulp culture - High modernism dates low brow cheesecake, Betty Page dressed by Dior, beatnik Zen, hot rods at the opera.
For me the fifties represent a period where growing affluence and conservative social culture in the industrialized west was actually seeding, artistically and intelectually, new paradigms that would continue to emerge for decades to come. In the freedom of beatnik poetry and the dance of Gene kelly are the first artistic expressions of the coming counter culture.

Of course I have no conscious lived experience of this period so my work in this genre is about the ironies and paradoxes we flirt with when we study the past,when we remember and when we romanticize – how often we choose emotional meaning above an objective truth to create our own subjective reality – our own primary truth. It is about our hidden desires that live in the gaps between our public speech. The things that only find freedom in our thoughts, if we are lucky enough to think them consciously.

Artistically this is translated into the tension between form and freedom, myth and reason, belief and knowledge, the public and the private self – that eternal abyss that separates what we experience from what is lost in translation when we try to express it. The paradox and pitfalls of being a self aware human.

Finally my artwork at its most personal and private seeks to express, however inadequately, the joy and passion I experience from having a woman in my life, a woman whom I love deeply and who is my muse and model. So to my wife Jen, I am eternally grateful to her for her gentle strength, her grace and femininity, the window she offers me to see life from a woman's perspective and the precious time she gives to be my model. I am happiest when she models for me. No other pleasure comes close. Thank you Jen, it's been worth the wait.

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