My Ideas and Process
 I’m
frequently asked where I get my ideas. I wish there were easy answers;
translating a vision into language is to describe air by inflating
earthbound words. The interior rhythms that stir up a vision and
put it into motion bring to mind star residue falling from space
into the seas and sparking life. Either the idea falls to me or
I find the idea. I sketch, dream, experiment, welcome chance, conjure
new theories, improve technique, and still artistic invention is
a mystery to me.
Music
and tactile sensation enter my creative acts. Half-recalled melodies
and the reminiscences of sand and water may play across my mind
as the idea is born and begins to take shape. A cantina’s
peeling door, someone dying, an oil slick’s iridescence, ocean
air, a dream of hot lava, macabre tales, the night’s burning
stars––anything can ignite an idea, which leads to decisions
of structure, placement and color. Within those bounds, a creation
emerges that exists somewhere between chaos and order.
To
begin a painting, I score the metal. The metal work can be formalized
patterns, random bursts, or twisting currents to create planes of
dynamic tensions and rhythmic pulsations. Once I’ve completed
this aspect, I apply the many layers of transparent paints and blend
them into color fields. Then I add the mixed-media impastos of pumice
or sand or ground minerals, then more layers of paints. When these
stages are complete, a three-dimensional image emerges combining
movement, clarity, depth and ceaseless mutation. It’s the
synthesis of all of these elements––textured metal,
transparent color harmony, personal vision, compositional cohesion––that
determines the success of a painting.
I‘m
intrigued with natural phenomena, astronomy, geology, evolution.
I’m equally interested in our preoccupation with birth, death,
loss, sexuality, curiosity and the subconscious. An image of flight
may symbolize our desire both for the pure joy of taking wing, as
well as the desire to escape the madness. A colored orb invokes
the healing energy of certain jewels.
I
try to imagine nature from within, and seek to create a world, which,
if it never exists anywhere but in a painting, is worthy of existing.
In the end, it is your eyes and experience that breathes life into
art. A painting must stir something in you, kindle a poetic exchange
of thought or emotion, for the communication to be a success.
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