New art movements can be compared to lava exploding from a volcano.
Seldom are they gentle, calm and cool like a mountain stream. The blood of the artist spills onto the art. No matter the devotion of Monet—Van Gogh is the more powerful. The deviation from tradition that he exhibited is fused with an unbridled passion and love. Simply deviating from what has been done is insufficient. The artist is at a loss when at is best. From this “loss” of self comes the originality of the statement and ultimately the meaning.
These abstracts are assertions of how line, color, form, texture, and movement come together to intrigue the viewer.
They are not passive, there is no pause, there is no hesitation, and no time to rest. These are paintings that demand a relationship with the viewer that is both intimate and profound.
My work spans from the when I was five years old. My Mother asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up and I said “an artist” and reflected on the exciting finger painting time I had. As I moved forward into my early teens, I went to an old gravel pit and there was an open trailer with buckets of old paint. My first abstract expressionist painting I named “psychedelic-welic.” A word and work, I created at the age of 12 years old. Buckets of paint were splashed and poured onto a sheet of plywood. As I did it I uttered the title of the work. And each can of paint had a color that was unknown until opened. There was complete spontaneity and and physical movement that was unbridled. The piece was never photographed. The other boys that I was with had no interest in the painting except exclaiming to me that it was “cool.” I did not do it to please anyone, but to express the power of color and form in the moment. It was the doing of the work that became the art, and the art that was left—was the residue of that physical and emotional expression.
Today my works combine intellectual, emotional, and physical expressions that are like footprints of a wild animal running after being chased; recognizing his own ultimate demise by fighting ferociously to stay alive, turning to fight the very beasts that seek his destruction, and at other times, making his mark on the land to be viewed by others in some distance future time.
These works are intriguing and moving devotions to not just the stars but to the “buttons” and other common items that we so often overlook. Stargazers will remember that their two feet are embedded in the dirt. Those so trapped in the world who never look up to see the stars will find themselves taken to new places, to unique thoughts, to positions and places thus far unvisited and unrestrained.
