Decoding DaVinci

I paint to further my respect and admiration for the magnificent artists who came before me. To revel in the sensual, meticulous work of Ernest Hackle and see it come to life more than half a century later in Disney’s ‘Fantasia’ is the creative lineage I am a part of. Georgia O’Keeffe and Vincent VanGogh are the obvious inspirations. I am just as profoundly influenced by Agnes Pelton and Charles Burchfield. Janet Fish is an absolute revelation for me. I find her use of oil paint having much in common with Sargent’s sparkling watercolors, created more than a century ago. With all due respect to his mother, Whistler’s ‘Nocturnes’ propelled me into a visual synthesis of scientific exploration and representational painting. In our attempt to define God/Goddess, a multitude of explanations currently exist. I rely upon the act of painting as a means to further my own understanding. Wayne Thiebaud writes: ‘We’ve only begun to scratch the surface of what painting can do.’ If I had another one hundred years in which to continually create, I feel I would never get to explore all the new directions that Realism is calling to take it in.

I have been obsessed with synthesizing Representational and Abstract art forms in the same paintings for the last several years. I want to flood the emotional power of Abstract work into the meticulous technique of Trompe L’oeil. I am exploring specific, dimensional articulations within the previous flatness of Abstract portrayals. The new works of art in The Brand Surfaces Series indicate the most conscious and direct approach to Post Abstract Realism that I have rendered to date.

Mithras Wissenchaften, the Viennese art critic who so favorably reviewed my 2005 exhibition, provided me with inspiration that I have been able to actualize. He urged me to combine my passion for Turner, Sargent and Diebenkorn in the same work of art. His suggestion freed me from the compartmentalization of respect in which I’d originally held each of these artists.

John Singer Sargent captured the spirituality in architecture, over a century ago, in watercolors so brilliant and moving I was stopped in my tracks upon turning a corner at The Met when I was twenty-four years old. After studying every square inch of the only three J. W. Tuner paintings that LA is fortunate enough to have, I now consider him to be the premiere artist of the Abstract Expressionist movement. Dibenkorn’s walls and fields of colored atmospheres pay tribute to the flatness of a painting’s surface while simultaneously transforming a two dimensional surface into the illusion of three dimensions. Turner’s radical use of layered glazes paved the way for Dibenkorn’s Ocean Park Series.

Agnes Pelton is finally getting some of the credit due to her, nearly thirty years after her passing. I see more and more of her revolutionary approach to composition appearing in my own work, in addition to the obvious inspiration of Georgia O’Keeffe that is still with me since my days in artist colonies throughout the southwest, primarily in Sedona, AZ

Whether I am using a heightened Realism technique, dramatic composition or…expressive color- I want the viewer to forget they are looking at a painting. Like Diebenkorn, I desire for people to step right into other dimensions, using the paintings I create as their thresholds of entry.

My on-going participation in the Writing Groups facilitated by Ms. Lisa Doctor has had a tremendous impact on me. The harnessing of emotional concepts through the use of words has established a new foundation for the paintings I create. I could never have ventured so deeply into the Abstract vernacular were it not for Ms. Doctor’s Group and all of the participating writers in it.