Oil Paintings:

Like many people living in this time, I am cognizant of the anxieties of our age: war, crime, poverty, ecological and environmental disasters.  Often the world seems overwhelming and our efforts to make a difference seem ineffectual.   My paintings are an attempt to reconcile myself with that world. 

Historically landscape painting has sought to replenish the soul and provide emotional solace.  My landscapes, while not depicting specific locations, are meant to be a sanctuary where one can go to contemplate and find relief, a form of retreat.  My titles are ambiguous like the painting themselves. They may be remembered places, transformed or imagined. They are tonal constructions of planes, light and atmosphere – a reorganization of the image and reduction to the essentials.

While I have no desire to outrage, lecture or reform society with my paintings, my goal is to bring some comfort to the viewer.  I refrain from guiding the viewer toward a predetermined interpretation, preferring instead to create a space for personal and meditative response.

Geometrical Drawings:

For many years I have worked primarily with oil on canvas.  Recently I hit the “refresh button” and began a series of charcoal drawings. Charcoal is widely used to create landscape, figurative and still life drawings. When viewing representational charcoal drawings, I always find myself looking at them with an eye for the abstract, blocks of tone, contrasting black and white forms, empty and negative space. I am less interested in the subject matter.

These drawings are pure abstraction containing geometric forms absent representational content. The geometric shapes drift through space, bending, folding and flattening.  The shapes exist somewhere between plane and empty space.  In one drawing the ascending shapes feel like the ascending notes in a musical scale while another evokes the sensation of falling through space.

As with the charcoal drawings the geometrical acrylic paintings are purely abstract. The motivation is the same, colorful shapes drifting through space, bending and folding and flattening in a similar way.  They often have the feel of children’s pick-up sticks and magic tiles scattered and thrown waiting to be assembled.

I have found that working with different mediums and concepts to be energizing to my creative process.