| Description: The first in a cycle of large scale works, these were painted freely interchanging and rotating modes of expressionism, figuration, and awareness of the mural scale painting as a public image. While striving to create the “cohesive whole” through surface, the making of this work was actually more dependent on the disruptive period of time over which it was done.
One of the main concerns of my work is the painting as a type of assemblage, as proposed by Duchamp in the last century. With this as one approach, and the now seemingly archaic concerns of abstract expressionism, these works became a synthesis of different visual languages, with pop imagery here, Mexican folk art there, Greek myth and current world events spread all over the surface of my art, even as the gestural gushed from my brushes.
These paintings attempt to balance the auto-biographical nature of my image making with the universal spirituality sought by people today, glimpses of which are sometimes even seen in material culture and everyday life.
Large and unstretched, I consider the painting to be a mural-like tapestry or banner, similar in nature to Golub’s heroic approach. This also allows me to easily “rotate” them, so that the disruptive process adds to the “series of destructions”, as per Picasso, that takes place as I paint. It offers a way of making “cut up” paintings.
In these works, I’ve used both the traditional glazing method and contemporary flowing methods of modeling the surfaces of my canvas, approaching oil painting as though it had the immediacy of a watercolor. This immediacy affords me the spontaneity I feel is necessary in bringing a work to life. |
