"Tree at Montrose Cemetery"

Website to be updated soon

I have been working and reworking these landscapes throughout this year. Now that I am beginning to see some closure; I will be adding images soon.

Return of the Figure

I have returned to painting the figure after 13 years. I have found my paintings lacking the specific and the concrete as a subject matter and am delighted to be working from the live model.

The landscapes also have been moving in a more structured direction because of this move toward the specific. The sketches I make are focusing a particular place and time with the will to feel the form in a more tactile way. This has changed my working method to use paint in a thicker more palpable substance, lending to a more direct experience.

There are many thoughts that cross my mind while painting. Lately, I find myself less inclined to present these and consequentially rebut others peoples doubts. I find that the act of painting to crystallize these thoughts in a language which no longer needs justification.
Of course, this does not mean that I will not have plenty of thoughts to share in the near future.

" he was also oppressed by the realization that no artistic communication is more than a fraction of what the artist intends"

Charles Child Walcutt referring to Herman Melville in the introduction to Moby-Dick

Picture Plane

I am trying to push everything more towards the front of the picture plane, while still maintaining some kind of depth. This hopefully offers a glimpse of the sensation of a particular space rather than merely an image of it.
When I look at the paintings of Mondrian, I get a clear part of something much larger.

Small Paintings

Working on small paintings along with the larger ones simultaneously, gives me the chance to change the entire composition quickly. Taking some of those experiences back will have an effect I never could have anticipated.

On the Easel

Here's one of many sketches I make while on walks in my area. I use these as springboards for the paintings. The paintings are always of a particular place and time and begin from what's close at hand.
On the easel are 2 small paintings in progress working from that same sketch.

Last Paintings for 2009

December 2009

Origins of Language and Mythology

The more I read of Greek mythology, the more mysterious the origins are. I keep returning to Hesiod and Homer and still ask, what was it before them?
Below is a quote by Giambattista Vico which helps me understand how language and arts came together with civilization at the same time which will never happen again.

"Poetry, which was the first form of wisdom, began with a system of thought, not seasoned or abstract, as ours is now, but felt and imagined, as was the case in those primitive human beings who had developed no reasoning faculties, but were all made up of senses in the highest physical perfection, and of the most vigorous imagination. In their total ignorance of causes they wondered at everything, and their poetry was divine, because ascribed to gods the objects of their wonder, and thought that beings like themselves but greater could alone have caused them. Thus they were like children, whom notice taking into their hands inanimate things, and playing and talking with them as though they were living persons. When thunder terrified them, they attributed their own nature to the phenomenon; and being apt to express their more violent passions by howls and roarings, they conceived heaven as a vast body, which gave notice of its anger by lightning and thundering. The whole of nature in like manner, they imagined to be a vast animated body, capable of feeling and passion."

Giambattista Vicco Della Metafisica Poetica

Harmony

What makes the harmony?
Past the regular preconceived ideas. It is a series of instinctual actions tempered with serious reflections.

Painting is always the relation of what is being said to how it is being said.

As they say with speech. The same holds true with painting. Don't mince your words.
Every single dot of paint has to be locked into the form. It contributes in ways which cannot be simply broken down and examined.

September 2009 gouache

September 2009

Abstract Painting

The transition of my paintings from abstracted representations derived from drawings in the field, to paintings starting from various sensations coming from multiple levels of experience is happening on its own accord.
I think that music plays a major part in this transition. Usually, a song comes from playing around with some form that catches my whim. Then, before I know it , I'm on to something. The thing that sustains me is a flash of something I think I hear while simultaneously playing.
The hardest thing to let go of, is the concrete form. The image which is always there to go back to. A form is still there. It is just different. It is no longer an armature that represents some kind of image preconceived before the execution. It is still a type of armature, but it is not at all the same.
The form is there, etched somewhere between an unchanging grid, and a quick glimpse which embodies more of a tangible place which is felt and sensed in entirety.
This presents a problem for me technically to keep up with the sensations coming in. Painting has changed to a more layering process, within the key of the whole, which can change any time and must be kept up with. The physical issue of oil paint remaining wet, calls for a lot of preparation. I must be able to completely relocate an area if desired without the mess interfering with the mixtures I want.

I begin to see a trace. Something that's left over and doesn't look like it was touched by a human being.
When I see something as if was coming from more than myself, painting begins, for real.

gouache on paper
9" x 12"

The initial striking in of the picture is for me, an all or nothing type of situation.
Somehow, I must be able to find the general key of the picture and simultaneously, catch some glimpse of content, without depicting. This usually happens with constantly adapting and harmonizing with acts of desperation.

oil on panel 12" x 12"

The poet seeks what is nowhere in all the world,
And yet - somewhere - he finds it.

Titus Maccius Plautus

Latest oil painting

oil on panel
22" x 24"

June 2009

oil on panel
27" x 24"

Crayon and chalk drawing

Spring 2009
6 "x 6"

This is an example of where these paintings begin. They're always done outdoors and in rapid succession. About 6 or 7 drawings, one after another while walking. I don't stop until I can focus on the glimpse that I thought I maybe saw.
China marker is my favorite medium here.

The gouaches are the next step. Each motif has a few gouaches that are built up as I start an oil. All these go back and forth until the painting has an unexpected depth while retaining the spontaneity of that original drawing.

Outdoor Scene May 2009

Gouache on paper
11" x 13 1/2"