Artist’s Statement

I make art because it is my natural inclination, like breathing. I make art because I have to. I seek to communicate using my art, but my first concern is pleasing myself. The essence of art is autonomy.

Although a certain amount of natural talent is necessary for high achievement in art, the limiting factor in art-making is not talent. The limiting factor is the will to create.

I’m mainly a painter in acrylics. My drawing is passable — I have some flair for a decorative line — but my main talent is for color. While I greatly enjoy the transformation of the gesture of my arm and hand into an arabesque, I am seduced by color.

I cheerfully engage in an ongoing conversation with the fluid nature of paint: how it flows, drips, runs. As a novice, I fought against it, but since then I’ve loosened up and now I embrace it, inhabit it, and live by it.

I also enjoy subverting the picture plane by sometimes making the painting a low-relief wall sculpture. The conflict/dynamic harmony between illusionism and three-dimensional reality gives the work a unique formal value, in my opinion.

Some of my work is representational. Most of it isn’t. But it all borrows from nature: earth, sky, water, plants, animals. It also borrows from the dreamscape of my mind. To me, existence is a mystery, and I seek to concretize that mystery in my paintings.

As far as craft goes, I’m not a fast carpenter, and have difficulty making things perfectly square and plumb. Nevertheless I have a high degree of concern for structural integrity and generally overbuild everything I make. In addition, there is an added bonus for curators, collectors, and anyone else who may happen to remove one of my paintings from the wall: All the paintings on rigid supports are not only finished on the edges, but also painted on the back. Some of these “back paintings” would qualify as paintings in their own right, but I think of them as a hidden reward for the person who has the opportunity to experience the painting as a unique three-dimensional object that can only be truly appreciated when seen from all sides.

Whether the product of my sweat-inducing and often tedious labors is sufficiently enlivened by inspiration, I don’t know. I simply do joyful battle, and the treasures won, if any, are for others to judge.