After decades as a studio artist, I have found a way of building a painting that perfectly suits my need to work with physical materials and processes that express my passion for color and abstraction.
The process is a slow and progressive layering.
The pigment is spread in controlled layers using very thin and flexible aluminum blades, surgical grade Teflon scrapers and an assortment large and small soft synthetic bristle brushes.
As the paintings evolve the color is sometimes washed away with a mist of water, smeared carefully with rags and scrapers and heated with controlled temperature so a top layer of colors can be added.
In essence what I do allows me to work in quick sweeping gestures and equally in slow and nuanced detail. In this process paint can flood, move and drift over the surface with an organic energy.
The painting process hints at the feeling of slow geological movement, metamorphosis, and surface topography.
Every artist has a unique process and a period of reflection before starting a new body of art work.
I do months of research exploring a topic I find interesting and challenging. Usually it’s related to music, architecture, the natural sciences or cultural history. It’s detective work that leads to new places, expanded ways of thinking and refreshes creative potential.
The process starts by studying, reading and collecting digital images that are added to large digital image library I started years ago. The library is also a photographic archive of my own paintings and is always growing. To date there are over 20,000 images.
Next, I use specialized software, a digital stylus and a touch sensitive pad (Corel and Wacom) as well as digital drawing media to manipulate, deconstruct, “recombine” and rebuild the images as nonrepresentational and abstract fields of color, shape, texture and pattern.
The new images are a carefully considered blend/mix of my art with the new researched subject matter. These recombines become prototypes and studies for making the physical paintings.
At the end of the day, the measure of joy or success is always reflected by my surprise and wonderment.
Each body of work is based on a thematic concept inspired by music, architecture or science. Explore their stories.
