I have spent most of my life in beautiful natural locations such as Montana, the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State and, for the last two decades, on the shores of Lake Superior in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. My art reflects an appreciation of nature, its aliveness and energy.
I am also fascinated by the figure and what I call “abstract figuration.” During the artistic revolutions of the last one hundred fifty years artists have continued to experiment with a traditional subject in art, the human figure. I have responded to two artistic concerns with respect to the figure: gesture and color.
In the West, a gestural approach has its roots in the preparatory drawings of European artists from Raphael to Rembrandt to Rodin, but it became a primary concern of artists such as Kirchner, Matisse, Schiele and others at the beginning of the twentieth century. Another gestural approach is found in Japanese landscape and figure painting.
Movement is a fundamental dimension of life. Gestural figuration is in part concerned with the implication of movement in a static image, thereby fusing two dimensions of consciousness, space and time. Through gesture drawing and painting, primary artistic and, therefore, human concerns such as space, temporality, and meaning can be explored.
A second focus in my work is the expressive role of color. In academic traditions of representing the figure, color tends to be downplayed in favor of monochromatic renderings that focus on the figure’s structure. Charcoal, white chalk, pencil, and occasional washes are the favored media for academic structural studies because these allow for careful renderings that signify physical reality without the potentially distracting effect of expressive color.
However, I embrace this expressive role of color luminosity as it relates to gestural imagery. My motivation is not to explore disturbed psychological states in the manner that seems to have motivated the early Expressionists such as Kokoschka, Schiele, and Munch, but to gain an understanding of luminous color in relationship to healthful emotion, thought, and spirituality. The play of transparent and opaque areas within a painting reflects this concern for luminous form.
Nature
Yoga Art
Abstract Figurative Painting
Figurative Paintings
Historical Inspirations
