Sausalito California Artist Statement

Artists Statement

Painting is more than just a creative discipline, it is my vocation. Even as a child I looked at the world with the eyes of an artist, trying to figure out how to capture what I saw onto paper. My style has evolved through the years, but it stands today as a process of escaping the confines of optical reality. It is my intent to enable the viewer to feel the energy I put forth in the creation of my works through the use of expressive paint and color application.

I started experimenting with cityscape compositions in 1986. It was not until 1999 that my work began to evolve into the "painting shorthand" I employ today. The term, shorthand is attributed to the abbreviated manner in which I imbue life and vitality into the structure of the urban landscape. The houses, office buildings and billboards that populate my paintings are animated with bold color and loose lines in order to convey the pulse of energy I feel coursing throughout my urban surroundings.

The structural layout of the cityscape blends fanciful composites in with my perceptions of urban life. The idea for such an arrangement derives from dreams I have had since childhood of flying over imaginary places laced with elements of real locations. These dreams not only serve as a source of inspiration, but also allow me to visualize a painting in my mind's eye before depicting it on canvas or paper. My intent is to capture the sensation of fleeting movement, and is best described as emulating the transient perceptions one experiences when driving in a car as the landscape passes by the window.

I strive to communicate and evoke emotion by juxtaposing idiosyncratic choices of complimentary and dissonant colors, and adorning the canvas with paint splatters alluding to energy, freedom, and action. Emotion is further expressed via uneven textures created through the thick application of paint. These elements combined assist in achieving my ultimate object which to optically draw the viewer into the city scene. Equally valuable is providing my viewer with a composition that is pregnant with intricate features and meaning so that they are encouraged to come back time after time, seeing a different hidden detail each visit.

Symbolic iconography is subtly embedded throughout the work that is not only of personal significance, but also serves as a device for engaging the individual to interpret the work through symbols, color, and energy. Such evocative and compositional elements include images referring to the abstract notion of change; either changes in life in general or sudden shifts in the cadence of the composition.

For example, blue and black butterflies are indicative of one stage of a metamorphosis, the numbers “1 2 3 " signify a count down to change, and random circles, either scratched into or layered onto the surface, that insinuate portals to unexpected change. Another important feature is the expressive treatment of the black line in my paintings, which serves more as a visual vehicle to aid the viewers optical journey through the urban landscape.

So as you look upon my canvases of saturated color fields, strategic compositions, and evocative images, it is my hope that you will be filled with the sensation of flying, freshly liberated into a sky of unlimited, imaginative horizons