Print #1
Print #2
Print #3
Print #4
Print #5
drypoint, chine colle
In these prints, the square is a form and a void in space. It is organic, like the irregular weave of something handwoven, a plane not usually parallel to the picture plane. It has varying degrees of density from image to image. In the first print, the butterfly is entering or exiting the dark square while in the second butterfly print, the butterfly inhabits it. Which world is unknowable, the dark or the light?
Colored prints number three and four are landscapes, atmospheric, and created out of color. Number three is constructed out of slabs of paper giving the sense of monumental scale of Stonehenge and just as bucolic. The fourth print is all about sky and reflections; a white square fades in and out of focus. Its subtle and peaceful qualities are in the vein of Agnes Martin, revered for her simplicity and achievement of sensations of tranquility. She is one painter who knew that less is sometimes more.
Print number five is like Daffodils, Loss, but without the flowers. It is stark but soft, full of contradictions. When I was a teenager, I painted a mural in my bedroom of a split face, one side in color and the other in black/white/grays with the word "paradox" painted above it. It was pretty much the theater comedy and tragedy masks rolled into one. Something of the theme remains in my work despite having left adolescence behind long ago, LONG ago. I would never have been able to make these prints as a teenager. It is not a technical issue but a conceptual one. My work hinges on the idea in combination with materials, process, touch, and perception. There is change, but there is also a strong, yet flexible philosophical undercurrent buoying it all along.
