ARTIST'S STATEMENTS



2011-2012

After a year of deep focus on expressing music visually, I returned to oil on canvas. In 2010 while working with music, I had discovered a way for me to pull up imagery, motion and pattern.  Now I am exploring minimal compositional fragments of these complex musical drawings.  The process has taken on a life of its own and feels to me as if I am now exploring an inner world of shapes, lights and space.  I am also focusing and discovering new ways to apply paint to achieve glowing surfaces and depths of color.

2010
 

About "Seeing Music"
The "Seeing Music" project is dedicated with gratitude to the composers and musicians who bring music to us. How impoverished our existence would be without it!

The idea for this visual exploration of musical compositions came about, while I listened to Vivaldi, in response to the question:, "I wonder what this music looks like?" And so began my adventure into translating the invisible world of sound vibrations into pictorial language, a new abstract vocabulary to describe the aural art.


Music, being invisible, can only be seen in its universal language of notes and lines. But just as a landscape, a story or poem, an emotion, or an injustice can inspire and provoke visual art, so are the endless possibilities in music available for creating abstract expressions of beauty.

 The "Seeing Music" project is an ongoing series that explores sounds.  I select a musical composition and listen to it with my heart rather than analytically. I allow the complexities of the music to bubble up intuitively onto the material page. I pose questions: How does it move? Is it circular, linear, horizontal...,? What colors do I hear?" How does the crescendo look? Is the music happy or sad? Masculine or feminine? Complex or simple? What archetypes come to mind? The questions go on. I make some discoveries.

 As an example, Philip Glass's Aria from Act III of Satyagraha. suggests to me the archetype of a human achieving the victory of peace after strife, yet forever a memory lingers of the sadness of the struggle that preceded. The sound of the main theme moves diagonally upward from left to right, the warm colors rise toward gold, but in the background there is the gray-blue memory.

I paint each original in colored India inks on a heavy archival paper. The original is reproduced via a high density digital scan as closely replicating the original as possible.  Because I want to work to be spontaneous and human, I avoid digital alterations to the look of the original piece.

The images are printed in limited editions of 50 on heavy archival paper and signed and numbered on the back.

 

2009

In mid-2009 the paintings took a big shift.  I wanted to explore the paintings I found within the earlier paintings and so series began to emerge from a 'mother' painting.  In these series I sought to explore inner ideas such as the quality of gentleness, making peace with loss and regret (Flowers for the Dead), the passage of time (Dry Leaves), the experience of forest nature in sun ((Woodsprites) and in shade (Indigo Road).  Using images that spoke to me from previous work, I focused my attention on simplicity of space and line, and the voice and purity of color.  I feel color much as I feel music and the paintings can be also be experienced as poems.

These new works are much more minimal than the paintings of my previous era.  They are loosely sketched in and the shapes are defined slowly as the color areas are methodically built from layer upon layer of altering color until I arrive at a point where I want to go no further.  In many cases the surface color has been adjusted 10 times and so a depth of color occurs and a jewel like quality to the paint.
 

2007 - 2009


 The paintings that I create come from an intuitive part of myself and are not premeditated.  I am always surprised at what emerges.  The part I play in the work is that of the listener and transmitter.  What appears as I build these paintings are fragments of thought forms; fetish animals, calligraphy, gestures, and unnamable yet somehow relevant abstractions.  The paintings begin as an energetic explosion of color and movement and are then meticulously crafted until they achieve a harmonious definition, unique surface,  and a cloissone-like appearance.

The intention behind my work is to energize the environment and enliven the viewer thus provoking an emotional state of happiness.  The paintings lend themselves toward exploration and contemplation.

Although at first glance my work appears abstract and complex, I consider the 'style' of my painting to be neo-minimalist in keeping with the musical style called 'New Minimal' by such composers as Philip Glass and Steve Reich.  The colors are limited and the brush work is restrained and there is a lyrical asymmetrical repetition.