Painting
I find a continuing fascination with, and deepening respect for, the process of oil painting, and art making in general, as a way of engaging with the world as genuinely as I can and as means of utilizing my potential as a human being.
I am continually amazed at the unending challenges of painting. The ensuing knowledge that comes as a result of this engagement funtions like the ladder toward a little more complete or compelling expression. It calls to mind a proverbial journey into the unknwon: I, as a human being, am molded by what I choose to see and do.
Specifically, I am drawn to thinking about the physical, as well as psychological, space that we inhabit. We are given to choosing many things, but the fact we occupy space in order to exist is undeniable and universal. My art explores the content, texture, and resonance of space that enfolds us and which reflects who we are in return.
Photography
In recent years I had experienced moments when the chance encounter of certain vistas astonished me with keen visual presence and meaning. Such encounters often signifyl a motif for me, and I take successive images to underscore the motif.
The case in point is my series “Modernist’s Aerial Views.” Flying back to Chicago from New York on one wintery day in 2008, with snow covering much of the ground, I saw below a succession of “drawings.” Because the ground was one continuous and immense expanse, what contextualized the “drawing” was my framing the shots based on my own modernist bent and
compositional viewpoint.
In October of 2009 I was visiting Berlin and witnessed firsthand the city-wide celebration of its reunification 20 years after the fall of the Wall. A week-long intensive exploration of the city resulted in two artworks upon my return: "Three Graces: 9-Panel Montage" in painting, and the 30-image "Berlin Photomontage" culled from literary hundreds of photos I had taken of the city. It is an iconographic survey of Berlin, of its richly complex political and cultural history. Two images I included are of the Potsdam Sanssouci, located due west of Berlin, as a symbol of the region's opulent past and to call to mind the Potsdam Conference which sealed the divided Berlin at the conclusion of World War II.
Walking through the Central Park one early spring with remnants of snow still on the group, I noticed an image of my surroundings reflected in the shallow of water on the pavement. As I walked further on, there was another. Soon I was exploring Central Park following the images captured by the prism of nature itself (Central Park Reflected).
The spaces we occupy are marked by our presence. Such is the emotional pull of ruins and vacant buildings hushed by time's passing and our own mortality (Space & Soul.)
Snow: Millennium Park and Snow: Lincoln Park were shot back to back on two days in January 2011. They are an ode to Chicago and the transformative power of snow.
