Painting

The influence of natural structure in general and its relationship to drawing in particular form the basis for his return to painting in the early 1990’s. His first series, DUST, is a response to the incremental structure and ever-changing pattern of duckweed, a floating aquatic plant. The emphasis on a mark and its evolution into pattern becomes his approach to painting. In the HAIKU series, his graphic language is expanded by mold that is grown to intersperse with his painted marks on canvas. NOTATION, MESH and VESTIGE reference both Chinese brush painting and calligraphy by continuing to compare the world that is seen with the world that is felt. The nine paintings of NOTATION contain a developed marking vocabulary from which all later paintings are derived.

IMPACT IMPACT is a series of oil paintings executed on concave panels, which explore the dynamic vibrancy of gesture. Developed as a counter both structurally and conceptually to the FIELD paintings, IMPACT with its interconnected marking episodes references in two-dimensional terms the drawing activity captured in the wall and floor pieces of the RHAPSODY series.

FIELD 2002-2008 The FIELD series is a fusion of painting, sculpture and drawing. FIELD'S convex form underscores a fragile visual tension between the surface texture and the illusion of space residing within the pictorial plane. The optical and consequential effect that an ocular migraine has on one's spatial perception was the initial inspiration for the resulting imagery occurring in the FIELD panels.

SQUIGGLE and VEER In the SQUIGGLE and VEER paintings, layers of random, chromatic marks are employed to create the illusion of three-dimensional space on a flat plane. By broadening the marking process and intensifying the color, the viewer is simultaneously aware of the paintings' physical nature while being deceived by their illusion of space. This shifting ambiguity, between the material and the intangible, gives SQUIGGLE and VEER their visual tension.

NOTATION NOTATION, a series of oil paintings completed in 1998, developed a marking vocabulary that began a few years earlier in the DUST and HAIKU series. The MESH, VESTIGE, INNUENDO and PULSE paintings derived their visual language from the encyclopedic assortment of marks visible in the NOTATION series.

MOTIF The MOTIF paintings are constructed from translucent strata of varying painted marks or strokes capped with an opaque lattice of connecting script. Initially begun to exploit the surplus of unused elements from the PLY series, MOTIF emerged as a structured fusion of two disparate marking styles that are however based in gesture; a lucent substructure of gestured strokes differing in size and color contained by a monochromatic calligraphic tapestry. MOTIF continues to explore through the medium of paint the activity of drawing as a marking system with its relationship to writing.

PLY Begun during the summer of 2008, PLY is a series of indirect or transfer paintings, whose initial concept was a response to the 1922 Telephone paintings of László Moholy-Nagy. Paralleling Moholy-Nagy's act of disengagement by establishing a distance of time and space between the artist and the creative act, translucent acrylic paint, varying in color and intensity, is randomly brushed onto multiple plastic sheets culminating in a glossary of painted strokes. Later from this extensive marking vocabulary, individual units are selected then applied to a convex panel, constructing the painting incrementally with transparent layers that simultaneously capture the action reminiscent of painting activity while involving the viewer vicariously in its process.