Undiscovered Country
2009, 34" x 32", oil on linen
Painting connects me to the art of ancient humanity: cave-drawings; petroglyphs; Northwest Native-American cedar carvings. Abstraction connects me to contemporary culture: large-scale urban graffiti, corporate and pop-culture iconography. In all of these, I detect shapes and forms linked with microbial life--Humans expressing the parts from which they are made. I move through them as a sleeper in a dream.
Painting, for me, is like pond water, full of teeming translucent shapes of mystery which can only be glimpsed through the specific magnifying window of a microscope. Everything is an abstraction, we only think otherwise because our senses are limited. Light-waves and particles cannot be seen with the naked eye.
I express these revelations with the medium of abstract painting—without expectations, preconceptions, or limitations that I may bring to the canvas. I come to each painting fresh and whole, with a child-like sense of play. For me, spontaneity; inventiveness; and exploration of the resulting unanticipated surprises, are paramount to my creative process.