Galleries, dealers, museums and clients often request an artist statement from the artist. I have written many and I just wrote another one in anticipation of an opening of my works in the Weatherburn Gallery in Naples, Florida. I am departing from my usual agenda here to give you that artist statement.
I take my cue from Leonardo da Vinci (as a blog reader, you know that I am fond of him. I am about to give another lecture on Leonardo da Vinci as the first neuroscientist in Lakeville, Ct, at the White Gallery on March 19th). The artist is not only an alchemist but, a scientific observer as well. I follow developments in the fields of neuroscience, the psychology of perception, the biology of vision, and of course, the vicissitudes of art history. If my paintings are to arrest attention then, I need to understand and appeal to our sense of motion, space, cultural sensibilities, pattern recognition, color predilections and our affinities for rhythm, visceral textures, and mystery. Research in how our mind works offers new tools for me to create images with layered meanings, unfolding narratives and multiple readings. I pursue color harmonies compatible with biological preferences, historical associations and contemporary fashions. I adopt historical iconography and blend that with research on how our vision works. I experiment with the reflectance of new materials like aluminum, steel, copper, and anodized aluminum. I follow Leonardo’s example as he proposed that we observe nature scrupulously, attend to suggestions presented in ambiguous surfaces and experiment endlessly.
Artists whose work has sustained our attention pushed the limits of their imagination and the limits of their materials. This a goal of mine. They appropriate new technology and new scientific insights in the application of their materials, their selection of materials and motifs, their physical point of view, their appropriation of art historical models, and the employment of their passions. This has been my methodology. I present natural mystery as revealed through observation, research, practice, experiment and my attention to the innumerable surprises that surface as I surrender my expectations to events appearing in the paint.
In the series of paintings, ” Leaves On Reflections” , my observations of translucent, quivering water with its variable appearances below, on and above the surface offer a territory for infinite experiment and delight. Color, perspective, design, pattern, motion and uncertainty are all categories for my experimentation. The water offers a metaphor for fabric and tapestry as easily as it offers a metaphor for patterned stained glass.
The narrative works with figures layer the past with the present. Just as you and I can look at a morning’s sunlight on a tree-shadowed lawn and think not only of this present moment of color, shapes and texture but also remember another distant moment being triggered by the same scene. The past and present amalgamate in our mind. I present their mutual impression in my pictures just as I allow for the evidence of the paint to co-exist with the evidence of the illusion. You can will your attention in either direction ( to the paint or to the illusion) within my paintings. Similarly, you can will your attention to look at the reflections on the watery surface or the material resting below or above those reflections.
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