A definition of art and brief artist’s statement:

Finely mulled oil paint can be a magical substance. It suggests so many expressive and seductive possibilities that other more explainable and teachable aspects of art — iconography, technique, social relevance, or decorative charm — can easily take a back seat. It certainly has for me. 

What might seem like a frivolous activity to many of us, ie. the carefree dispersion of pigment and oil upon a prepared surface can, if pushed beyond reason, open up one’s sensibility to unexpected supernal realms. Cultivated over time as a spiritual discipline, a spreader of color and oil may one day become an artist. I don’t regard one’s race, sex, class, ethnicity, or culture, as an impediment to taking this journey. Accordingly, I aim for an art that is limited neither by locality or history; but rather an art that is universal.

Any discipline — scientific, athletic, literary, etc.  — is conditioned by its intrinsic characteristics.  In the realm of art these characteristics impose limits as surely as the working materials do. Observing these resistances and coping with them will be evident in any good artist’s work. Most people think that if art is easy for you, that’s a sign of talent, so you must be an artist. It’s quite the opposite. As you develop, art becomes more difficult. The demands you place on yourself become more strenuous. But at the same time you become more conscious.

In the case of painting, ‘intrinsic’ means a painted image is static and frontal. It’s not in time. It’s not going somewhere or becoming something; it simply ‘is.’ In other words, whatever the handling might be — no matter how seemingly undetermined or over-determined the brushwork or application — the canvas needs to finally arrive at a state of arrest. ‘Still’ doesn’t mean ‘slack.’ It means that the painting is not so much an assemblage of lines, shapes and colors as a balance of forces. The forces released by the artist either expand or contract, but in the end they need to reach agreement with each other. For that to happen the expansion must be a sentient one. Its energy can’t abate before reaching the edge of the support, nor can it keep on going, rendering the picture a fragment of something larger. A picture must appear as an entirety.

A picture occurs when release and constraint reach equilibrium, and also achieve maximum tension. Imagine a partially inflated balloon, and at the same time imagine a balloon blown up to such a degree that it has popped. Both conditions end up as flaccid. But when a balloon is filled to capacity it’s as big as it can be, and correspondingly its skin is as taut as can be. Now just substitute ‘vision’ for air and my metaphor will be complete. In a nutshell, this constitutes the ‘discipline’ of painting. There’s more of which, for lack of something less hackneyed, we use the word ‘inspiration,’ but it can’t be accessed with words or concepts. 

Painting that is essentially interruptive, that tries to operate viz-a-viz division and/or juxtaposition, or by superimposing one element upon another, is to my mind lesser painting. It can be executed well or not, of course, but it doesn’t interest me.

My recent readings in cosmology have made me aware that the universe also operates with these forces. Science tells us everything in the heavens is expanding, but not uniformly. There are local contractions everywhere: stars, planets, galaxies, and black holes. They will exist for uncountable eons. I notice something similar in my work. Expansion is not steady-state but rather unpredictable, and at times even spasmodic.

Although the universe flirts with infinity, the infinite escapes the human mind. As a consequence there’s no sentiency in the space of the physicists. Quantum mathematics is astoundingly efficacious; its predictions work out every time, but no one knows why. Whereas one can find sentiency — mind — in painting because it has no utility. It is a purposeless expression of consciousness. 

These are where my interests lie, my understandings of what I do, and also of what painting itself, is. I don’t really distinguish between them.