About
Updated First Quarter 2012
When I was a kid I read everything I could about art. At thirteen I got my own subscription to "Art in America." It was the 80's. I fell for Neo-Expressionism. (Although I dismissed the anti-intellectualism sometimes associated with it.) It fit with my punk sensibility and more importantly it was very hard to paint so well that it looked easy. I still like challenges. I also like the viscerally expressive nature of fast, smart painting. I love the basic-ness, fluidity and mojo of paint.
80's expressionism hasn't been my only influence. For the last two years I've been thrilling on 14th-16th c. European paintings' preciousness. I attempted some of that love (and gold paint) with "Rosemary's Shoes Europe 2010" and "Elizabeth with Snake." Preciousness was also a big part of "Strange Animals of Australia." I worked on them until I found a place sans cliche.
A main focus of my art is clarity of thought and style. I feel lost in the middle of making a painting but I persist and when the clarity emerges I stop.
Recently I have been thinking about finding the "natural state" of my paintings. The High Museum in Atlanta has a room of Ellsworth Kelly next to a room of Alex Katz. I've been spending a lot of time in these rooms. Kelly's paintings are big and perfect and have to be that size. They are in their natural state. The room of Katz has 4 unself-conscious, gigantic landscape paintings. I had not thought of this natural state issue until I saw Katz's paintings in this room. Part of my current focus is for my paintings to find their natural state, big or small, and not just be the size that fits in my studio.
Finally, although I never tried to emulate him or study him I feel that Marsden Hartley is somehow a paint wonder-twin. There are a bundle of reasons why but mostly we have the same ideas about balance.