Introduction

“The universe as we observe it is the only reasonable starting point in cosmology.”

– Stephen Hawking

Mystical musings, messy interactions, provisional notions, and pleasures. I’ve been trying to find a way to put paint into words for years, but it always remains one step ahead of me. The elements of a painting make no sense to a logical mind, like an equation that mixes its units, yet occasionally add up to spaces that hold together my disparate thoughts. The only way I know how to do it is to place one mark on a surface at a time and see where it leads.

As I participate in it, the process feels a lot like an informal conversation. Nothing is decided in advance, and I don’t overthink what a painting will become. It might involve my sanest or wildest thoughts, breezy elaborations, hesitations, affirmations, and not a small number of inconsistencies, but as the poet A. R. Ammons once wrote to a friend, “No, I don’t like a poem too perfect & beautiful, but flawed and great.”

The dichotomy of seriousness and play has a role as well, in the energies of a landscape, the terrain of a face, the intimacy of a toy, in the play of the paint or a playful title. During play, the unexpected happens, in small moments that might surprise, dazzle, or raise doubts. A space is felt, colors collide, a form drifts, or a shape begins to assemble. Such are the subtle revelations I seek.

I like to think my paintings are what happens when curiosity collides with reality, the trees talk back, and cosmic forces run amok. The funny thing about art is that it will succeed with or without a coherent argument. What emerges in my paintings is a quiet, persistent state of consciousness, both a reflection of nature and a liberation of the mind from nature.