Artist's Statement:
The power of color has been a life long passion. I am influenced and inspired by minimalist and the colorfield painters. I have transformed some of these qualities and questions that they brought up into into a new body of my own explorative works. My intent is to develop an abstract visual vocabulary with images using an innate sense of relationships which take the viewer to both somewhere new and somewhere in the subconscious at the same time.
The addition copper and silver leaf recently added to my works adds a fluid element as tones change from different vantage points. Those tonal changes then play with varying qualities of the rich under-painting.
I explore abstract painting because it was the strongest intellectual influence on me when I was young...the art popular in museums was 50-70's and it showed me that there was more to art than just painting a pretty picture. That whole aura stayed with me as I still find it relevant.
There was a real excitement about underground, avant guard, and the same in music which was also waking me up to a wider consciousness.
There was an intellectual divergence, well, even before that of course with movements such as impressionism etc, but the Modern Art of my day really helped form who I am. I had to think about art, and try to understand the importance of subtle (and not so subtle) social implications it addressed. The purpose of art changed through these movements.
Minimalism, expressionism, PoP, colorfield...this was the world that said to me, there's something important here...adventure, discovery, experimentation, meditation. I think it connects with others, a particular audience, and my work developed from these influences can keep that spirit alive in some manner...there are many people out there who Modern Art doesn't appeal to or it just hasn't clicked; I think some of them can still be reached and taken out of themselves for a bit of expanded awareness. That's the why...and I love doing it. I hope to bring the wonder of Art to others, so they can experience the excitement that woke me up to the world as a youth.
Techniques:
Working with multi-layered transparent sprays and washes I create unfamiliar and sometimes ambiguous atmospheres. An approach that I employ in my work is the restrained layering of thin transparencies over rich under-paintings, which gives the canvas a smooth finish, and highlights the abstract imagery. The recent addition of copper and silver leaf added to my works adds a fluid element as tones change from different vantage points. Those tonal changes then play with varying qualities of the rich under-painting.
