I like a challenge. With my art, I need to have a problem or a concept to work out. Given my compulsive nature, the challenge can be how many variations can I come up with. Getting lost in the work, I can live a long time within a set of parameters, but sooner or later I need to move on to something more demanding. The counterpoint to my obsessiveness is my rebelliousness. I don’t subscribe to any order. An avid player, I could be on a golf course every day, but I don’t keep score, and I don’t follow the rules. In this same way, there is a gap between plotting things and execution in my paintings.
Some years ago, I was taken with paintings of elaborate five-sided figures by an artist friend. At a recent workshop in San Miguel, Mexico, I spent hours every day painting a number of small oils on paper in which I tackled my own multi-dimensional forms. Then during the pandemic, I found that I had more time, patience, and license to start figuring them out on a larger scale in both oil and encaustic. What emerged was a negotiation between my two sides: the one that is controlling, the one that has to be free of restraint.
Thinking three-dimensionally, I create outlines in a color field intuitively, but I am not working things out with three-point perspective. Playing with expectations, my multi-dimensional forms may be better described as inferred rather than realized. I fill these in with squares, rectangles, diamond shapes in a way that the viewer wants to read as in-depth and geometrically correct, but the imperfection I love doesn’t allow that. The illusion goes in and out but ultimately breaks down. The “checkboards” are doodled in, and I try to stay within the lines, but I prefer to be inexact and not machine-like with my medium. I have no motivation to tidy up any messiness. While hue can visually create space, my choice of color is totally intuitive, but it’s a struggle to pay attention in laying down pigment. These forms are persnickety, although I’m developing muscle memory that is stretching the limit of what I can do with them.
The Painting Center, NYC – Installation Shots
