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Think:
100 years from now
1000 years from now
THAT is "It."




My work is above all about Consciousness and Vision.

It is unapologetically about the old concepts of meaning, truth, and even beauty - concepts which many may feel are trite or obsolete, but which are actually concepts which have driven me to choose a lifetime of being an artist, and which still drive me today.

Superficially, I do embrace the old categories of painting: figure, landscape, etc., and I choose to work in time-honored two dimensional media. However, I intend and hope to use those traditional means to nontraditional ends.

I have a love and respect for the history of art. It continues to be a deep sense of inspiration. Yet I have no patience for the repeating of history's forms or concepts simply for the sake of their own preservation. I feel no need to break from traditional forms as a means to demonstrate newness as a thing in itself. I seek substance, and even transformation, through all I do in art. That I create art is a gift to me, and I create art with the intent and desire that it be a gift to others.

October 17, 2001




Art
Artist
The hunter
The panther
Making art is
Like following a magical string
(or like a trap line)
You have to follow it--
Along it sometimes you will find its treasures
(sometimes not)
Or the traps will be empty and then, there it is, you have captured your prize--
Or is it your prey--
That we are hungry, ravenous




I paint what I see. I don't know if what I see is in my head or outside of me--probably both and neither. It is the sensation through my eyes that made me want to paint, and yet so much of what I do comes from another part of me than my eyes.

I go to "places" to paint. Places are that important to me. The imagery around me enters my work. I often title my work from the place I did it. I have traveled long ways to paint in places. It's for the inspiration, not the appearance. I am guessing that these places are necessary only to reflect in me what it is that I truly want to paint.

I feel as if I paint almost as if I am blind. I get up close and let my body take over. My eyes are only one of the senses involved. Perhaps I would say it is really the Inner Eye that sees and guides the outcome of my work.

April 1996
From Catalog Accompanying "Face-to-Face: Recent Abstract Painting"
at MIT List Visual Arts Center





art
a passage
a way
an opening
a door

June 2014