As I get older I think of my work less as “new work” and “old work”. I think that instead there are threads or themes that keep coming up. There are ideas that I find myself dealing with again and again over the years, I keep finding new ways to explore these same questions.
I’m interested in the power of the image, in the fact that small fragments of information carry so much power and communicate so much; that so little can convey so much. With the introduction of tiny hints, an abstraction becomes particular. Ambiguous space becomes particular space. I’m interested in that boundary between realism and abstraction. A few brush strokes can become a human figure, or a bird or fish.
Another aspect of this is just the phenomenon of illusion itself. Over the years I’ve painted lots of knots and weaves. Just a few lines put one band in front of another. That it one of the simplest illusions.
Sometimes I make lots of little paintings exploring one theme. But I also love the tradition of narrative painting. I like to make big paintings with lots of stuff going on, with lots of incidents. I like the challenge of creating a rhythm in my art. I think that rhythm is an essential element of visual art. it helps you move you eyes from place to place in a complex painting.
Working on Paper
For years I have only painted mostly on paper. I’m not even sure how that evolved. Maybe it started with the economy of it all. I could store paintings easily. I could carry a whole exhibition in my VW bug. I was using pure pigments with various binders because that was cheaper than buying tubes of paint. I used to love to go downtown in NYC and shop at the pigment dealer. Whole barrels of brilliant color blew my mind. Slowly it evolved from a convenience to a preference. I fell in love with the colors of the pigments. I loved the idea of working for so long on a painting that was so frail, that could be so easily ripped. I loved the fact that, if a painting wasn’t going well, I could cut it up and save the parts I liked. (A friend who had studied at some fancy school in London told me that the best Rembrandts were the ones he cut up himself.) At some point, it just became the way I worked. It was the language in which I expressed myself.
Well, sometimes I work in oil paint too.