Artist Statement
I create controlled meditative fields of color by layering delicate glazes until a chromatic resonance is achieved. I like to work from complex to simple; unifying varied underlayers with broad bands of color, in a modified classical technique, adhering to the basic principles of the old masters while using modern materials.
Using tube oil with a fast drying alkyd medium, which allows me to build up successive layers rather quickly, as well as remove partially dry layers to reveal what lies beneath, I create the complex underpainting. After establishing a basic light and dark composition, transparent and increasingly more resinous and fat layers are added, building the light capturing structure of the painting. This process is additive and reductive and relates to the thematic dualities to which I am attracted.
Complexity and simplicity; accumulation and reduction; chaos and control; light and dark; always working toward a balance of states; external and internal; one can only be percieved in relation to the other. The emergent horizon is that of contrast, in color and tone, rather than earth and sky. These are bands of energy coming to contact; outer atmospheres touching deep space; light fading to infinity; transmitting into the void.
I strive for purity in my paintings; to use colors as musical notes, to create color chords, scales, and tones. I seek depth without illusion; to harness light to provoke a primal, emotive response. My goal is to create paintings that are experiencial, revealing themselves a layer at a time.
Lifelong inspirations are stains, stones, rusty metals, natural erosions and decay with all implied history, and very real entropy. As well as comic books, printmaking, and science / fiction. As well as Rothko, Sam Francis, Frankenthaler, and Tapies. As well as strange music, strange film, and strange words. Yadda yadda yadda.