Artist’s Statement Bottlescapes I began the Bottlescapes series with the desire to imbue the traditional still-life with some of the monumental beauty of the Chicago skyline. As a Chicago resident who often walks and drives along the lakefront, I have long admired the breathtaking views of its downtown buildings. These man-made towers of glass and steel take on a dignified, breathing, organic quality when seen at a slight distance (as, say, from the Adler Planetarium). As it unfolded, my project was to evoke a similar viewer response from compositions based exclusively on antique glass and earthenware bottles. Once I had arrived, after several false starts, at a working method, I introduced small harmonic changes from painting to painting through adjustments in composition, background, support and lighting. In a similar way, the emotional resonance of the Chicago skyline depends on when and where one views it. Monet’s famous series of haystacks, poplars and cathedrals illustrate this principle. I have tried to incorporate a small part of this lesson in my Bottlescapes. September 2008 Last spring, after completing a series of paintings based on macro photographs of flowers, I returned to the challenges (and rewards) of the studio still life. In part I wanted to experiment with certain effects of interior lighting. But I was also challenged by the idea of painting on a smaller scale than had been customary for me: Smaller canvasses and smaller brushes in the service of greater specificity and intimacy. Some of the compositions in the series are lit by natural light, others by studio light. I have used studio light to create dramatic effects of shadow and reflection unavailable to me without it. Studio lighting can also heighten the contrast between foreground and background to dramatic effect, bringing something of the Renaissance atmosphere to even the most contemporary of subjects. This effect is dominant in many, but not all, of the paintings in this series. One of the challenges for me has been to compose the elements of the paintings without cliché or gimmickry. One sometimes labors mightily to avoid the appearance of laboriousness. A successful still-life arrangement, I think, should combine elements of the natural and the artificial in fresh ways consistent with the mood being communicated. And that is what I have tried to do. Of course the arrangement, once conceived and properly lit, needs to be bathed in the artist’s individual sensibility if it is to live. I hope I have succeeded in breathing life into some of mine. I have also tried to have fun with the project, to highlight the playful, sometimes surprising effects of lighting and reflection, showcase textural contrasts, and (hopefully) create some arresting illusions of perspective. Everything is grounded in nature and observation. My goal was to create unified, well-painted images that continue to delight the viewer. Flower Paintings (2007) My recent paintings of flowers were inspired by the arresting effects created by the macro lens in close-up photography, and my desire to translate these effects into the medium of oil painting. Under certain conditions of light and aperture setting, the macro lens isolates the subject from its surroundings, creating a vivid, highly textured subject dissolving into a radiantly blurred, prismatic background. Known among photographers as bokeh, the diffused colors of the background and edges often confer a soft, mesmerizing quality to the entire image, one not visible to the naked eye. Also, the rapid fall-off in focus creates a dramatic, often mysterious sense of depth within the image frame. Using my own macro photographs of flowers – from the lowly marigold to the exotic orchid – I have tried to capture in paint this beautiful and transforming interplay between highly resolved and refracted image elements. Since April 2007, my macro lens and I have spent several days a week, in the early morning hours, photographing flowers and other botanical subjects. This adventure has taken us to the glorious Chicago Botanic Gardens in Highland Park, the hidden jewel of Fernwood Botanical Garden in Michigan, the five acres of greenhouses at Hauserman Orchids in Villa Park, the Morton Arboretum, the Indiana Dunes, and the gardens of generous freinds who live in Harbert and Lakeside, Michigan. Spending so much time outdoors in the heart of nature has been an extraordinary revelation to me. I hope that some of the beauty I experienced is communicated in my paintings. Apart from the emotional allure of the subject matter, this project poses a number of technical challenges. I employ several painting techniques -- including underpainting, glazing, scumbling, layering and blurring -- in an effort to solve them and, with luck, to communicate the powerfully affecting “bokeh” quality in my paintings. Abstract Paintings (2006-2008) The paintings in this series were inspired in part by microscopic and aerial imagery, and the other-worldly patterning they appear to share. Evoking a sense of wonder and mystery, these paintings aim not only to delight the senses, but also to stimulate our awareness of and appreciation for the harmony of nature’s deep patterning. In addition to referencing the natural world, these images also echo (for me, anyway) some of the abiding currents of modern and contemporary art, going back at least to Mondrian and continuing through strains of Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art and Minimalism. I have in mind such developments as the increasing dominance of geometrical design over representational fidelity, the flattening of the image, the disappearance of landscape’s traditional “horizon”, and over-all concern for the canvas space (no slighting of negative space here). Through the orchestration of design, color, contrast and texture, I have tried to forge harmonious, poised, arresting, ambiguous images capable of eliciting a gratified response from a contemporary audience. The alchemy of influences in creative work is difficult to describe, and is often a process of which the working artist is unaware. So it is with this painter and this series of paintings. In retrospect, I detect an early fascination with Greco-Roman friezes, alongside a lifelong delight in trompe l’oeil effects in painting and photography. The sensuous dreamscapes of Tanguy and Matta, with their equally sensuous techniques, may find a grateful counterpart in my own work. There is also more than a hint of the sharply-etched patterns and color palettes created by the great Disney artists.. I recognize a debt to the early Cubists (Cezanne, Picasso, Braque) in my anti-gestural technique and the way in which design tends to divorce itself from a known referent to suggest a self-contained universe. These great (and largely unconscious) influences only scratch the surface. So much from the past! And yet, I hope, something modestly new.
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