EXPLANATIONS:

As an artist, the urge to explore an ongoing series of ideas and themes has taken and continues to take me on an idiosyncratic path through diverse enterprises and modes of expression. What I find is that each venture enriches the next.

Whatever the media, my practice typically takes one, or the other, of two apparently antithetical approaches – the lyrical and the comedic. This is logical since this is the lens through which I view life in general, as both wildly beautiful and wonderfully absurd. This is evident in my essays and blogs as well as in my visual work. While the lyrical is what impels my series of large oils, The Archive of Ideal Forms, it is the comedic, with a dash of pathos, that propels The Man vs Nature series.

It seems like both sensibilities may be useful at this critical juncture in human/planetary evolution. Either we find a way to create a more enlightened society, or we scorch the very ground from which we sprang. It is my sincerest wish to produce work which might cast at least a glimmer of bio-luminescence upon this all too human struggle.

After the past eight years involved in online publishing – realizemagazine.com, and authoring a book of essays – Her Argument, Epiphanies, Theories, Confessions, it seems my visual art practice is the most powerful tool I have. To wit, I am currently continuing my underwater polar bear series, Archive of Ideal Forms: Ursine, Subaqueous, as well as a series of ironic watercolors whose approach to the theme of the incipient loss of the species takes a tragic-comic tone.

I suppose less is more, when talking about one’s artwork, so instead I’ll just use a quote from Her Argument on the general topic.

We artists are guard dogs. Throw us a bone. We patrol the peripheries of life, of culture, of being, of soul. We sniff out the truth, then we dig, we unearth. We are your appointed seekers of subliminal syllogisms, of symbolic symbioses, of supernal signs. Our jaws may only grasp such slippery substances for a heartbeat, however, if anyone can hear that beat, it may set up a rhythm somewhere in their soul. Maybe they’ll even feel like dancing.

Artist Bio