Of the Paintings

I work representationally in a traditional oil painting practice, using cradled wood panels as surfaces. A decade ago, during a particularly numinous period in my life, a torrent of pictures flooded my imagination. Using this material, I have been working on a large series of small oil paintings, many of which are presented here. I find myself painting mysterious psychological states, round-about portraits, and philosophical motifs. I’m interested in the deterioration of the original image and the interplay between memory and representation. The drawings and collages that first began to populate my body of work have been lost to time. Many of the initial paintings were lost as well. I am left with the memory of an image which retains its potency. It’s an image which continues to ask to be brought into the world. Central to my practice is an apprenticeship to signs; I try to decipher the meaning of the paintings, individually and in concert. To encourage deeper attention, I also create multiple paintings of the same image. I research the symbols to bring me further into the work, into the unconscious. 

Ash in the Prince’s Eye 

Beneath a strange, light blue landscape with dancing dark blue passages, a yellow flame hovers near a mask-like form. Above, a volcano releases a blue and bright-orange cloud which funnels into a sunset sky. This apocalyptic scene takes its title from a Platonic dialogue where Socrates asks his interlocutor if, in a certain situation, based on a particular morality, it would be wisest to pour ash into the prince's eye. The context is half-remembered, along with the specific dialogue (perhaps the "Meno"). I took the phrase to be a revolutionary suggestion on Socrates' part, and it has been rattling around in my head ever since. When I drew this abstract figuration, seen in a water-mark on my neighbor's crumbling wall, the words thundered back into my consciousness. 

The Bone Woman 

From a white, gently-textured, abstract shape, escapes a more developed form with a subtle face and one arm. A large, light-blue leaf floats beneath the figure. This composition is set against a solid blue background. To my eye, the shapes convey a bone-like structure supporting a bone-like woman. I connected this with a story called "Bone Woman", which I encountered in Clarissa Pinkola Estés book "Women who Run with The Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype". (A woman gathers bones in a desert. She arranges them in the shape of a wolf, and she begins to sing. The song breathes life into the creature, at which point it runs away.) The picture evokes, and was born from, a sense of the Marvelous. In 2017, I made several drawings of the beautiful shapes in the peeling bark of Sycamore trees. I yoked this particular image to the story at a much later date, and painted it even later.

Green Kiss 

Like an uncanny version of a Little Golden Book, a double-headed figure emerges from a gold-flecked vertical stripe. A large wooden head stretches forward as a grey face protrudes from her neck. These hover over a sparkling sea. A yellow teardrop form intrudes or escapes upon a blue speckled background. The wooden woman in this painting is frozen in a moment of time. There is something, or someone, trapped in her throat. Her voice, her creation, is stifled but is intent on becoming manifest. As still as she is, she cannot escape the expression of the components in the world around her.

Quiet Circus

These blue and black, curved and pointed shapes meet each other in the center of a framed composition. Within the black shape floats a small, white, bird-like creature. A white, oblong shape and a large virus float in the blue shape. The piece was made by tracing a shadow on a wood-grained floor. In it, I see the silhouette of a face. And where the eye would be, sits a bird-like creature, perhaps a personification of soul. The macro microcosm is moving towards the figure, a gesture of disintegration. And yet there is something positive or comical in the shadowed, oblong, white form. Maybe it is the soul’s escape pod.

Fata Morgana

 A yellow and red rainbow is flanked by dark tentacles and crowned with a sickle shape. Emerging from a black sea, it casts a faint reflection. A cloudy blue and gold sky looms in the background. According to Wikipedia, "A Fata Morgana is a complex form of superior mirage visible in a narrow band right above the horizon. The term Fata Morgana is the Italian translation of "Morgan the Fairy" (Morgan le Fay of Arthurian legend). These mirages are often seen in the Italian Strait of Messina, and were described as fairy castles in the air or false land conjured by her magic." The name of the piece came from a fortuitous combination of: reading The Death of King Arthur, dreaming of a sinister red and yellow rainbow, and (in 2018) seeing strange shapes in wood-grain floor.  

The Smoke of Sacrifice

This piece could represent a stifled agency or potency. Its title comes from a line of Klopstock’s: “Whoever chooses blindly is struck in the eyes by the smoke of sacrifice.” The painting depicts an armless figure who is shadowed by a large, disembodied hand, which consequently renders the figure faceless. These ideas of barred agencies and shadowed identities are recurring themes in the larger body of work. I often see covered faces, fragmented figures, and frozen movement.

Fire Theater 

It may play a central role in this body of work because of its striking brightness and strangely clear symbolism. Fire Theater represents inner fire and inspiration, or, conversely, destruction. When we draw back the curtain, or the veil, a blaze is revealed. It engulfs the field and foregrounds a smoky sky. The curtains are black in relief. The simple stage is empty. The fire is contained, it is performing, it is aware. A straightforward image with an archetypal significance, Fire Theater brings a dynamism to the almost frozen atmosphere in some of the other pieces. 

Trespassing Between the Hours

There is a frozen vessel below an upside-down sea, depicting both eternity and potential. A Karl Kraus quote comes to mind: “The sound principle of a topsy-turvy lifestyle in an upside-down world order has stood every test.” The perspective of the boat shows that it is on a clear path. Another quotation comes to mind. This time, by Carl Jung: “This path to the primordial religious experience is the right one, but how many can recognize it? It is like a still small voice, and it sounds from afar. It is ambiguous, questionable, dark, presaging danger and hazardous adventure, a razor-edged path, to be trodden for God’s sake only, without assurance and without sanction.”