I taught my painting students to mind “the forces before the horses” while creating a composition and to save the descriptions for later. Now, in my own work, color, directional forces, edge, movement, texture all create a tapestry of rhymes or discordances, until a cohesive whole is achieved, while mutant shapes are unearthed to interact within a dreamscape. Prehistoric plants, surreal trancelike figures marching in processions in unworldly mountains or forests offer a parallel world, or a warning of an aftermath.
Looking at narrative or mythical paintings from different cultures to analyze how the story is structured informs my work. Indian, Japanese, Flemish, Dutch, Baroque or early Renaissance Italian, early American, Grimm’s Fairy tales, Disney, Arp all offer inspiration for the visual language of story.
While our actual planetary survival is at stake, I paint to mirror our failures, polarities that freeze action and result in massive migration, drought, flooding, fires, starvation, and a circle of deadly outcomes.
Thousands of hours spent creating perceptual paintings on the streets of New York, Baltimore, Italy, France, Hungary and Haiti reflect my love for the outdoors and have provided me with building blocks for creating abstract narrative landscape paintings. The female figure often holds forth as a model of strength, even though she is misshapen, comically or in more macabre ways.
Other paintings lean more into abstraction for viewers to interpret and glean their own meaning.