Artist Statement
The current body of work, the Isness Series, continues the artist’s involvement with making paintings that are beautiful, sensual, and sublime, all at once. These abstract canvases employ diluted oil and acrylic paint to create moving forms in translucent color. In the studio, the white canvas is contemplated in silence. The artist’s mind is trained to stop the conscious processes of thinking and enter into a sacred space. At that time, the image shows itself like a light unfolding over the surface of the canvas. Each work of the Isness Series is totally spontaneous, and usually made in a single session of ten hours or more, and then revisited for another session or two, only to add layers of depth and tonal value.
This work is a dance between the artist and the medium, allowing both intuitive fluidity and disciplined control. The painting is totally alive during its making, combining compositional freedom and unplanned movement, with an innate sense of aesthetic balance. The beauty and subtlety of what takes shape can only come from higher and deeper layers of the artist’s self. "Isness", the name of this series of paintngs, refers to a metaphysical appreciation for the deep spiritual reality of all existence, as expressed in the phrase: "all there is is the isness of things".
The paintings express the artist’s feeling for all the layers of his own life: the physical self, the emotional self, the mental self, and the spiritual self, exposed and nothing held back. Rather than a representing the outer shape of the world, these paintings express the inner, fluid dynamism in all of life.
As abstract paintings, these works give access to a space beyond words. The viewer is invited to enter into a different area of awareness whereby the intellectual mind is put aside for a second and the simplicity of the real self, naively and childlike, is opened up and leads you into the work. Then one can enjoy the nuances, the secrets, the depths, and the harmonics that are inherent in each painting.
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