The human figure has always been the centerpiece of my paintings. Most frequently the figures are in motion. They are leaping, striding, swimming, heading into the wind at the top of a hill, dancing, bowling, maneuvering a tightrope, stepping right out of their clothes, and always with a lyrical defiance. Even in the works where my subjects are sitting or lounging, they won’t be sitting for long. Stories and ideas burst from the classically trained line of my works, with brilliant uber conventional colors. I critique –with humor I hope--the absurdity of the human condition. I truly believe, like old Confucius, that one picture is worth a thousand words. Strange for me to say, since I am a writer too and depend on the confluence of words to keep me balanced. But being asked to describe my visual work, I find it can only say, words are swell, but the gut emotional and intellectual connection between canvas (or paper, or plexi or stone etc) is the reality. I am painting and writing, first and foremost, about liberation: liberation of all kinds. My conviction is that liberation is not for my subjects alone, to be free to dance and be naked and “own” our world, so to speak, but it is as much about liberating the perceptions of the viewer from stale, outdated notions of who we are, who we were and who we might be. My style is loose, flowing and brushy, giving the work a sense that it was painted in one fluid, uninterrupted encounter with the canvas. But that is seldom the case. With a wide ranging palate of vivid saturated colors in full confrontation with each other, I often use black outlining to celebrate the marriage of drawing and painting.
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With
the exception of my ongoing pictorial interest in Greek gods
and goddesses, and familiar Christian myths. My heros are everyday,
familiar, and in the way of humanity, wonderfully ridiculous
in their demand for or unawareness of their essential dignity
and power. I hope I convey the playfulness, the humor,
the joyousness and absurdity of “becoming” and “self-expression”
while leaving the darker images of my soul in a local laundromat.
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