THRESHOLD

We’ve all had experiences which seem to connect us to a larger existence. We are transported to a threshold of new understanding and resonance. As a visual artist, I celebrate this unique human capacity – I channel sensations, emotions, and ideas, producing a unique voice which lives in the work that I make.

Gee’s Bend quilts, Hubble Telescope images, cave art, sacred sites, nature forms, sacred texts, ancient rituals, jazz music, and poetry: these are some of the starting points, as they may trigger this sense of expansion of self into a more resonant life.

Each painting I make is a symbol. They are not directly definable by rationality, and remain open-ended in meaning, existing as objects for our intuition to decipher. These paintings are rich in detail and subtle in their construction, so I like to think that the viewer will enjoy a slow, rewarding revelation with extended looking.

Using acrylic paint, modeling paste, charcoal, graphite, colored pencils, and pastels, I build up a stratified surface of intention and fortunate accident. I often lay down the paint in pieces, masking off forms, just as a quilter fits together swatches of fabric. I enjoy this piling on of one pure color with another, as it vibrates with visual energy, and may produce a strong emotional response, one beyond the reach of words. In a pleasing contrast to these heavier, bold forms of color, I draw lyrical shapes of smudged pigment or fine lines. I use templates to trace circles and ovals, enjoying their groupings into organic forms, or their existence as trails of fading line work. I finish the surface with satiny glazes of oil paint (patinas, veils?) which appear in subtle squares, biomorphic shapes, and other boundaries. Suggesting faded parchments or fresco walls, this surface speaks of accumulated histories. In the end, the work reveals itself gradually, just as an archaeological site sheds its collective history.

I make a rigorously formal art, but I have faith that this meditative system of replication and mantra-like activity will produce objects of joy, warmth, and plentitude. And rather than explaining away the work, I again have faith that these objects will operate on their own terms, leaving the viewer to enjoy the literal act of seeing.

Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail
Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
And, in the isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings.

-Wallace Stevens

Here’s a mystery found in a French cave. It appears that a group of Neanderthals walked into that cave about 176,000 years ago and started building something. Neanderthals were our closest living relatives but they weren’t known as builders or cave explorers. Scientists identify the forms as “constructions,” but they can’t figure out what they were for.

- Christopher Joyce, for NPR

Bloomstone:  suggests the inevitable manifestation of a perpetual life force, originating from a state of solid stasis.

Image making cuts across all cultures and comes down to us from prehistory. It is one defense we have against an illogical and capricious world. From it we seek a centering knowledge of where we have been, where we are now, and where we are going. We do not find specific answers, but the stage is set for contemplation and subtle transformation.

The visual artist acts as a conduit. I channel sensations, emotions, and ideas, producing a unique voice which lives in the made object.

My imagery references these transitions and journeys. Flames flicker in self-perpetuating transience, and exist as the divine spark. Ovals and circles stand solo, or congregate and mass in colonies of cells and echoes. Plant forms exhibit their snaking tendrils, their popping buds, and their fading blooms. One form reads as both boat and gravestone, signifying two kinds of journey. An ephemeral bird and a delicate lotus both speak of the spirit unleashed. A tolling temple bell is the angelus, while the resulting reverberations find their earthly pattern.

The work evolves in a slow process of accumulation, as I build up layer upon layer of gesso, charcoal, pastel, acrylic paints, and later on waxy oil pigment. I mix gestural, intuitive mark making with geometrical forms which I trace from templates. To make icons resembling tattoos, I draw directly with the paint. These are emphatic like welts, or they trail off into delicate imprints. I overlay the surface with a pattern of boundaries or thresholds using oil paint as patina or veil. Suggesting faded parchments or ancient fresco walls, this surface speaks of passage. In the end, the work reveals itself gradually, just as an archaeological site sheds its collective history.

Over the years, I have been inspired by the written word, and in particular, certain works of TS Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Kenneth Rexroth, and Walt Whitman.  Operating as a form of indirect illustration, I have given visual form to the ideas, and moods generated by the poems.

I am now seeking inspiration from objects.  The quilts of Gee’s Bend, Alabama are extremely important to that direction.  As a combination of bold, eclectic design, and a sacred presence of layered lives lived, these quilts are remarkable works of art. Possessing an uncanny foreshadowing of Modernist sensibilities, the ladies here have been gathering to make these quilts since the early 1900s. Bringing together echoes of such diverse artists as Thomas Nozkowski, Brice Marden, and Robert Motherwell, these extraordinary quilts have a very resonant presence in today’s artistic conversation.

The quilts are shocking when first seen, as pure visual delight washes over the viewer.  But this initial impact gives way to prolonged engagement as the patterns, textures, colors and overall harmony are revealed slowly, with each quilt assuming a monolithic presence, and concise voice.  I am put in mind of Paul Klee, and how each of his works is utterly self contained and complete, one to the next.

Under the influence of these quilts, my work has changed from being driven by an external, imposed narrative, to each painting being moved along by formal concerns, arising from within its own unique nature.  I have flattened the space in these works, and brought the visual information up front.  I think of these as assembled objects, like the quilts themselves. I contrast patches of soft, faded color with bands of heavily brushed color and bars of pure, solid color. Color itself has become an object, as I lay it down in pieces.

These paintings are intended to be seductive, but slightly jarring.  A precarious position of being visually right or wrong adds mystery. They may exist somewhere in between.  Sean Scully puts this notion succinctly, “I have always felt that for painting to become great there needs to be an inherent vulnerability to it.  For example, when Pollock says, ‘Is this a painting’, not ‘Is this a good painting?’.  It could be argued therefore that setting off with a definite intent is at odds to what painting is really about – you need not second guess it.”

I want to make a rigorously formal art, but I have faith that this tedious system of replication and mantra like activity will produce objects of joy, warmth and plentitude.  And rather than explaining away the work, I again have faith that these objects will operate on their own terms, leaving the viewer to enjoy the literal act of seeing.

Blombos Cave, in South Africa, has yielded some of humankind’s most ancient cultural objects, from pierced sea shells, strung into ornamental necklaces, to chunks of ochre, which have been inscribed with geometrical markings.  I am continually inspired by this moment in our collective past which seems to mark our crossover from merely instinctual beings, driven by survival energies, to poetic creatures of deep artistic feelings and rituals.

Deep artistic feelings and rituals, for me, are present in the astounding quilts made in Gee’s Bend, Alabama, from the 1920s onward until today.  These resonant objects speak of layered histories and pure aesthetic delight.

Wallace Stevens is a poet of pure aesthetic delight, as the free flight of the imagination takes on the role of humankind’s story teller, or maker of myth.