Introduction (Long Form)

“The universe as we observe it is the only reasonable starting point in cosmology.”

Stephen Hawking

Mystical musings, messy interactions, provisional notions, and pleasures. I’ve been trying to find a way to put paint into words for years, but it always remains one step ahead of me. The elements of a painting make no sense to a logical mind, like an equation that mixes its units, yet occasionally add up to spaces that hold together my disparate thoughts. The only way I know how to do it is to place one mark on a surface at a time and see where it leads …

That seems like enough said, but I’ll continue:

I begin with the subject, the source of all that is real. Perhaps nothing matters more because as Del Close (one of the early gurus of modern improv) put it, “My friends, you are all under the misconception that you are the most important person on the stage. You are not. Your scene partner is.”

Next, my approach to painting depends upon what the poet Wallace Stevens called the “morality of the sensation,” or believing in sensory experiences that are clear, vivid, and deeply felt, rather than mediated by artificial doctrines (and thank you to AI for writing this sentence for me).

Finally, my task (as I see it) is to return continually to that lovely gooey wondrous elemental substance on a palette known as paint and transform it into something substantial and revealing about the subject.

For this, I take my time. I like to potchke (i.e. to tinker though a slow, messy, or inefficient process). It’s my nature to be suspicious of a premature response, and it’s not unusual for me to change a painting many times over in pursuit of something more lasting and believable.

By the time I’m finished a painting is the sum of countless ideas, hesitations, affirmations, regrets, and frankly, a lot of inconsistencies. But this is the mystery that lies at the heart of making art. There are acts of accumulation and acts of disassembly, and it’s often hard to say what makes it all work – sheer competence or articulate description isn’t enough.

As the poet A.R. Ammons once wrote to a friend, “No, I don’t like a poem too perfect & beautiful, but flawed and great.”

I like to think my paintings are what happens when curiosity collides with reality, the trees talk back, and cosmic forces run amok. The funny thing about art is that it will succeed with or without a coherent argument. What emerges in my paintings is a quiet, persistent state of consciousness, both a reflection of nature and a liberation of the mind from nature.