PAINTING IN GENERAL
In general, I am interested in painting that is formally abstract and yet referential. Images are arrived at through a process of unconscious painting. As the work progresses, opportunities present themselves, form is teased out, a nexus of color asserts itself and an image takes shape. Once I recognize something is happening, I help it along to become what it wants. My conscious mind takes over and choices are made that move the piece to completion. Ultimately it is a message in a bottle to myself in which I come to understand the world and my reaction to it. That is not to say that themes and motifs don't become interesting and appear in a number of works. We do develop a vocabulary over time. If the goal is to be free and creative then the mind will wander and must be free to do so.

CURRENT ABSTRACTION

I see painting as a message in a bottle to myself. My engagement with painting has changed over time. I now see it less as a formal exercise and more as a healing modality. I am leaning into this dialogue with myself. All the tools from a lifetime of painting are available to me. It is more about maintaining a state of mind—being present, open and unattached to outcomes. Certain forms, colors and gestures assert themselves and flow from one work to the next like an ongoing conversation. I am exploring three or more motifs at the same time, cycling from one to the other. Sometimes they overlap.Subjects include an inner psychological landscape, personal memory, and political and interpersonal communication. 

LOCAL COLOR

This series is about reverse engineering Hudson River School paintings. Acrylic on art posters mounted on wooden panels. These are about my personal fascination with painting—Its history, technique and connection to the Hudson River Valley where I live and work. 

INTERIORS
The title references the body or the head—the porous cage that holds our stuff — experiences, traumas, memories, organs and emotions — that makes us who we are. Completed mostly during the COVID pandemic, these paintings deal with isolation: personal and societal. 

THINGS FALL APART
In this series I wanted to deal with pictorial depth, weight, light and shadow. The subject of nondescript objects or parts of things is a surrogate for the ambition to make something in a world of impermanence. This conceit lends itself to improvisation, discovery and play. I try to keep the process open and unconscious for as long as possible. Ultimately, the need for pictorial strategies asserts itself and I respond to formal opportunities to construct an image that makes sense to me.

THE GUTENBERG VARIATIONS
Both paintings and books are depositories of ideas. We experience the pages of a book as flat—black ink on white paper—but a book has space in the way a painting has space, through ideas and conventions. The books we read and the paintings we live with, define and reveal us. Just as a book requires the reader to assemble images and ideas out of its signs and symbols, the viewer of a painting is asked to translate brush strokes and paint drips into reason and emotion.