January 2010
"Cactus Paintings"
The point and purpose of my art making is to squelch the unrest that lies within me. My work is about placing the unrest represented by a tangible object at the forefront which resonates, titillates and excites me, but in the doing of it calms me down, restores my piece of mind and makes me feel complete.
My process is intuitive. I am attracted to certain images corresponding to my emotional and mental state at that period of my life, that time of choosing. I do not question why. I simply move forward trusting my selectivity. I experiment with my choices frantic almost to the point of obsession in terms of placement, overall composition and attention to my use of black/white and positive/negative shapes.
To some my very detailed compositions may seem too crowded with every millimeter of space activated, but I hope this aspect of the work only serves to heighten the tension of the moment. My paintings always make me think of Mozart who was accused of having too many notes in his musical compositions.
Choice of scale is vital to my work. In this new body of paintings, the small scale of the scenes transforms them into miniatures rather than landscapes. They become, I hope, a view into a scene in which the participant who has left behind an artifact is gone. We are left to experience that moment.
April 2007
"Urban Landscrapes"
Though I paint landscapes, I am not a landscape painter. I use the outdoors mainly as a setting for urban and social issues. In this body of work, I have been preoccupied with placing images of industrial or domestic trash in the scenes to create a raucous disharmony with the surroundings. I choose provocative images that trigger an association in my mind or that, combined with other ones, form the basis for my narratives. They seem to exist in a dream state, neither present nor past, neither truth nor fiction. The groups of people who have found their way into these scenes are perhaps bystanders to whatever event they are witnessing.
Since these narratives in reality have never actually occurred, they open up for me the possibility of painting them in a mixture of styles and techniques - line drawings or cartoons intermixed with realistically rendered objects, tightly rendered areas interspersed with smooth gradations of color. Often my work is a constant jarring pairing of visual contrasts - sharp and soft focus, three-dimensional areas and flat areas, textures surrounded by smoothness.
The juxtaposition of the content in these paintings can often be unsettling, as can the formal elements. In this way I hope I challenge myself and viewers to reconsider what aspects of life are real: the threats, the struggle, the private moments.
February 8, 2007
The following thoughts are taken from a book on paintings by Mark Tansey. They aptly describe some of my own thought processes.
On realism and representation:
"I am not a realist painter. In the nineteenth century, photography co-opted the traditional function of realist painters, which was to make faithful renditions of "reality." Then the realist project was taken over by Modernist abstraction, as later evidenced in the title of Hans Hofmann's boook Search for the Real. Minimalism tried to eliminate the gap between the artwork and the real. After that, the project itself dematerialized. But the problem for representation is to find the other functions beside capturing the real.
In my work, I am searching for pictorial functions that are based on the idea that the painted picture knows itself to be metaphorical, rhetorical, transformational, fictional. I am not doing pictures of things that actually exist in the world. The narratives never actually occurred. In contrast to the assertion of one reality, my work investiages how different realities interact and abrade. And the understanding is that the abrasions start within the medium itself.
I think of the painted picture as an embodiment of the very problem that we face with the notion "reality." The problem or question is which reality? In a painted picture, is it the depicted reality, or the reality of the picture plane, or the multidimensional reality the artist and viewer exist in? That all three are involved points to the fact that pictures are inherently problematic. This problem is not one that can or ought to be eradicated by reductionist or purist solutions. We know that to successfully achieve the real is to destory the medium; there is more to be achieved by using it than through its destruction."
April 27, 2006
My newest works from this year are full of tension and movement created by strong contrast of light within them as well as visual comparison of mass and line. I think these qualities bring to life some of the emotions I am feeling as I work and are a part of my physical make up. Without these components the paintings do not seem to me to breathe - they appear dead and muddled. These concerns in the paintings and drawings are approached in various ways. With the drawings I limit myself to a monochrome palette, i.e., the graphite, and I am very involved in exploring the contrast between mass and line, as in the drawing False Impressions. I also enjoy playing with the drawing's shape and format on the white of the paper.
In the paintings I am extremely conscious around the exploration of light. For example, in Situation Atrophy I have maximized the contrast in the foreground elements, especially the group of figures, not only to heighten their dramatic quality and importance, but in comparison to create a dreamlike quality to the muted tones of the house and figures in the background. In Joy I have painted in light shining only upon three elements; the garbage in the foreground and the house and tree in the background to force our eyes to view those elements and create a dialogue with them. In my newest painting, Forest, I have intentionally created a greenish, glowing light over the sharply delineated logs neatly stacked in a pile, against the softness of the building, trees and pinkish- reddish burning sky in the background and have heightened interest by using stark white for the garbage pieces scattered about the lot painting them as crisply as I can.
Devastation, and the atrophy of the individuals in our modern, corporate-run urban society are big themes in the works. They are themes I am constantly aware of in daily life. It is not so much the crumbling of the institutions that bothers me but the crumbling of the morals of mankind in their relationships with one another and in their goals for the future of society. The fact that we are practically powerless to effect change under the reign of the gigantic corporations of this century I find very disturbing. However, another side of me is very much tied to and grounded in nature, and that is why, for example, the juxtaposition of garbage and logs or plants and people. Trees pop up in many of my works as well, either as full and whole or as gnarled leafless branches. But for me regardless, they are a symbol of my hope that we will live on.
Jan 2006
In these newest series of drawings, I have enjoyed drawing with the graphite as if it were clay, i.e., literallly molding the mass into the paper and contrasting it with delicate line.
Dec 2005
Lately I feel like working with paper maché, will I one day?
Jan. 12, 2006
What goes through my head like a record spinning over and over: 'Fantasy and Reality, Fantasy and Reality, balance it, what is more convincing for the narrative? Choices, choices, choices.
Nov. 14, 2005
It doesn't have to be exclusively about a white glow, red could do just as well.
July 10, 2005
the thing is: Push it to the nth degree - whatever it might be.
Jan. 24, 2005
I do want that contrast between light and dark - very much.
Jan. 23, 2005
I used to think it was the angle that was so important to the composition of the painting, now I think that the space within it is also important.
Below are quotes that have inspired me:
Matthew Monahan (Sculptor, Los Angeles)
"If it lives through this - it will live much more than it ever did when it was the stable image."
Marilyn Minter
"I paint what it feels like to look."
Paul Chan
"In framing light, the light frames us."
Tennessee Williams
"Memory takes a lot of poetic license. It omits some details: others are exaggerated, according to the emotional value of the articles it touches, for memory is seated predominantly in the heart."
Bertolt Brecht
"Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it."
Dave Hickey, Air Guitar
"In mercantile democracies, however, the practice of secular art, from Edouard Manet to Cindy Sherman, has invariably been the product of "wrong-thinking" made right.Because such works represent more than what they portray. They represent us in the realm of the visible, and if they represent enough of us, and if we care enough, yesterday's "wrong-thinking" can begin to look all right. It's a dangerous game, but it's the only one in town."
George Bernard Shaw
"If you're going to tell people the truth, you better make them laugh; otherwise they'll kill you."
Francis Bacon
"the world is not to be narrowed til it will go into the understanding, but the understanding to be expanded and opened til it can take in the image of the world."
Shamim M. Momin, Whitney Biennial 2004
"less concerned with the production of grand and majestic terror, the current gothic sublime reflects an apprehensive, morally ambiguous state of mind, characterized by the possibilities of self-dissolution, a sense of waltzing on the edge of the eternal abyss."