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“Oh! Do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our
visit…”
T. S. Eliot
In the age of photography, and especially, computers, I seek, through my art, to make people
ask a question: “What is Art For?” These other media make any reproduction or image endlessly and effortlessly available
to anyone. Why struggle to produce your own vision? The short answer, as President Kennedy told us, is that, “…we don’t do
things because they are easy; we do them because they are hard.” A person doesn’t really learn anything in the already knowing,
or the having gotten done. Only in the seeking are things learned and found.
My art, therefore, is about process, about
paint; what is its color, how is it applied? I often deliberately limit my palette to the primaries: how is the world seen
then? What is line, form, space: how do we render a 3-d world in a 2-d image? My under-paintings and sketches frequently emerge
through the finish; an image of the past, a ghost of the process. Something about the how and why of the act of painting must
be seen in the finished work. Of course, the other piece is the concept: what does the idea of the painting mean to me? Is
this the same thing as what it may mean to the viewer? Sometimes the name of the painting may give a clue as to my context,
kind of like a poem in prose and paint. I want YOU to think about it.
Can we, together, answer the question?
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