CONVERSATION WITH THE ARTIST EPISODE ONE, December 18, 2005 Tell us a bit about yourself, how did you come to be an artist? The urge to create was always with me. As far back as I can remember, I was drawing and painting. It was my way, I think, of processing, understanding the world I found myself in. I am still doing that. Why do you only work in abstract. Why not landscape or portraiture, or still life? Working in the abstract, with no subject matter evident, frees me up. There are no boundaries, such as “realistic” color, or perspective, or appearance. There are no expectations. Everything is wide open to explore. What does your art mean, or say? What do you want it to mean? My art is only paint and canvas. The painting is just an object hanging on the wall. There is no overt “message” intended. There is obviously lots of subjective things going on as a result of the mental and physical process I go through, and then there is what the viewer brings to the art. What I want the art to do is allow the viewer a moment of quiet, contemplative awe. A moments grace, if you will. Tell us about that process. How do you decide what to paint? I tend to approach my work methodically. I develop a concept or idea that I wish to pursue, then set out to prove it right or wrong visually with my painting. I sometimes get off track but that can be very enlivening, to allow the painting to direct itself. It’s a very subjective process. I spend a lot of time just sitting and looking at the work in progress, waiting for it to say something. What to do next? I have at times, left a painting for months, only to come back with changes and additions that came to me while working on another painting. Can you give us an example of this process? The series “Eric St” is a perfect example. I developed the idea that I wanted to correlate or somehow connect the ideas of faith and of place. Where I am now in time and space and what does my faith in God have to do with it? At the same time I was reading about Fibonacci’s series of numbers. I began to layout sketches of my surroundings based on these proportions. And over this wonderful set of proportions I layered color and line, as a metaphor of the complexity of living life today. The results were a series of paintings that have a lot of nervous bustling energy, but in the end are very calm and almost serene.. You mentioned your faith in God. Can your art be considered religious art then? I am not sure if they would be considered religious art. There is certainly no overt religious symbolism included in them. There is of course a lot of subtext that could be seen as religious. The questions I am attempting to answer, What is my meaning in life? How did I get here? What does this all mean? Do these questions demand a religious answer? If they do, then yes my art is religious. My faith is a large part of life, and my art is a very large part of my life. It is inevitable that these two concepts are going to mingle. In fact, I spend a lot of time thinking and writing about how entwined my art and faith have become. They are in way, inseparable. It’s a “How do you get the chicken out of the chicken soup” issue. What are you working on now? I am working a lot larger right now. I have a series of paintings in mind that explore the “weight” of color. I have started squeegying on my paint instead of using the traditional brush. It lends a great immediacy to the process and I love the paint edges and how they engage with the color under or near them. Very interesting process. Very physical. I am excited about where this series will take me. To be continued…..