 I've been an oil painter since I was 8 and a sculptor since I was 15. I grew up with art and music around me and I thought that's how the world worked. By the time I was 13 I knew that I was an "artist" but I wasn't sure what that meant. Now after being an artist for forty years, I don't think I can describe what that means beyond the most personal translation.
Art is not technique, nor is it marketing.
Art is how one does things, Art is attitude.
I have been influenced by the history of art as I've encountered it. There have been many artists I've admired and learned from:
The cave painters and carvers of petroglyphs, the sculptors of idols of Babylon and earlier. The Cycladic boys and Oceanic and African sculptors. The megalith builders, the anonymous builders of the great cathedrals, Titian, Tiepolo, Leonardo, Michaelangelo, Reubens, Bosch, Breughel, Durer, Delacroix, Rembrandt, Vermeer, J.S. Sargent, Whistler, Matisse, Picasso, Philip Guston, Brancusi, Henry Moore, Noguchi, Ben Wade, Frank Lloyd Wright, poets, architects, artists in all fields, the list goes on and on.
This is my bloodline, people who worshipped the miracle of existence through the works of their hands and silent minds. I've understood them and loved them like brothers and sisters.
These people have all effected me as an artist, but my influences are not just human. The immense cycles of nature have created a pulse in my soul which grows and ebbs, and grows again, changing the way I do things, the way the illusion of life appears to me.
I feel we all come from a long line of artists. Humanity is distinguished in part by the ability to produce things with our hands. I think with my hands. Much of the disassociation people today feel is because they do not work with their hands. Our ancestors not that long ago all produced crafts. When one forms a pot of clay one learns logic. The process of producing and the process of life are inseparable.
Although I say art is not technique, an artist must possess technique in order to be fluent. Technique is language, but the language must be aesthetically rendered in order to be art.
When I was 26 I dedicated myself to becoming a world class portraitist, in effort to become a master of my language. If one can paint a portrait one can paint anything. As a result I've painted over 2000 commissioned portraits. This is now part of my past, but it is also part of everything I paint. I left portraiture because it became too restricting, I feel that painting is discovery. When one knows how the painting will look in advance there is no adventure. I still love the human form and paint figuratively if not "realistically".
This is because, after painting at one time in a purely nonrepresentational manner for 5 years, I came to the conclusion that if I was painting, I was communicating. And I realized that I was talking to a very small audience, while I wanted to say something real to a large audience. Figurative work is about the reality we all share visually. Within that arena an artist can say anything to anyone.
So despite the obvious abstraction in my work, I feel I am a 'realist'.
Being an "artist" had meant different things to me in every decade I've lived through. These are personal revelations, and unimportant to anyone but myself, since we all live lives of personal discoveries. This is just my way of understanding myself and the world I have been thrust into.
Please understand that to write about painting or sculpture is more about writing than about the visual arts. I have been asked to write this by a gallery owner who represents me well, and feels that this will help him and his staff represent me better.
With that in mind I will try to say something specific about what I do.
First a word about inspiration. I never wait to be inspired. The muse only comes when one has been working, so I am always working, in one way or another.
As a painter I am a colorist, this means that I am interested in harmonies of color areas. To me the term 'colorist' is about juxtaposing one color against another in a sublime way. To use strong color or primary colors, unmodulated, is like boulders falling down a cliff, while modulated color relationships are more like water flowing in a stream. I believe that a feeling of quiet in a painting is ever more important in our cacophonous times. It provides an 'oasis' of tranquility' even if the subject of the painting is more than tranquil. I look for unusual color combinations, or maybe 'personal' combinations is a better word. A feeling of the calm of nature is a quality I try to capture. I am a practitioner of Chi Kung and the 'internal' martial arts. This has effected everything I do. I look for balance and internal quiet, which can be transformed instantly into motion, in my daily practice, my life and my art.
I look for simplicity in my life and art. My work has divested itself of unnecessary embellishments, as I look for the thing that underlies the obvious. Life and art are inseparable to me. They cannot be practiced deeply without realizing that they are the same thing. In fact , there is little that I encounter that doesn't remind me that all the variations of life represent the same miracle.
As a sculptor, I like to carve stone and wood. Touching stone is like touching eternity. Here is a chunk of primeval matter, patient as time, unchanged since it was formed in the earliest days of earth from matter generated by the stars. And here I come with the audacity that I can make it better than it already was. So I feel the responsibility to do just that. To leave an imprimatur of intelligence in its form, of my sense of harmony of volumes, while leaving it still a stone in nature, but a stone which shares the character of a man.
Recently I've begun to paint with a computer. It's a joy to do that because it removes me far enough from the finished printed image to make me feel as if someone else did it. I then see it new and fresh, unlike painting or sculpting which is so physical and familiar.
I hope that this has somehow helped to get into the mind of someone who thinks with his hands.
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