I do art for art's sake. My paintings are about the creative
intellectual field of painting and are not about social, emotional,
or political issues. They are my solutions, inspired by the rich
legacy of painters before me, to the problems presented in making
paintings that work. I consider my paintings mental adventures
intended to intrigue the viewer in many facets of painting, while,
at the same time, providing the viewer a rewarding visual
experience.
My paintings are studies in composition and color. I seek grace and
flow of line, harmony and elegance of color, balance and complexity
of composition. My style requires that these issues be solved
simultaneously in a crisp, clear manner but, at the same time,
having an overall lyric effect. This is where the primary challenge
lies - to resolve all these issues with as much clarity and elegance
as possible. These issues frequently conflict over and over again in
creating a painting and my reward lies in finding solutions which
work in a comprehensive and harmonious manner.
Many of my paintings explore the interplay between geometric and
organic shapes. The organic lines give movement and flow to the
painting while the geometric lines give structure and stability.
Together, I find they provide an energy and excitement to a painting
as the eye comprehends first one and then the other.
There is also a strong historical component in my work. The shadows
of several artists lurk in my paintings. The strongest influence,
running through all my recent paintings, is that of Picasso, but
other artists and styles of art are there as well. I have painted
off and on all my life and studied painting in college. My work has
varied from representational to quite abstract, but color has a
prominent place in my painting, I share the love of color shown in
the impressionists and expressionists paintings and in many abstract
paintings. But it was while doing a detailed study of some of
Cezanne's landscapes that composition and flow in a painting became
so important in my own painting style. I liked Cezanne's dramatic
emphasis on composition and began to incorporate a strong
compositional statement in my own painting. Then, at a show entitled
"Matisse and Picasso" at the Kimball Art Museum, I saw Pitcher, Bowl
of Fruit and Leaves by Picasso and this inspired another major
change in my painting style. Now I began to develop a great respect
and fascination for the uncompromising hard edged works done by
artists including Kandinsky, Klee, Kupka, Frank
Lloyd Wright, and others. This seemed to fit with my background in
mathematics where an emphasis on simplicity and elegance is so
strong. You can also see in some of my work an influence of the open
airy feeling given in many Matisse paintings - I enjoy the sense of
motion and presence and integration of outdoors and indoors in these
works. More recently, Kupka's work has inspired my compositions. His
later work has been seen to resemble the geometry of mathematical
fractals - a subject of some of my early research in mathematics.
Still more recently, I have become interested in the firm bold
statements in the folk art paintings of David Bates.
I strive for a strong bold use of line, color and composition where
the issues must be faced without equivocation. All this must be done
while creating a picture that is pleasing to the eye and enticing to
the mind. The challenge is enormous.
