Monoprints! (#1, #2, #3)

monoprints

3" x 4" image size on Arches paper



In the history of art, many artists individually and collectively issued manifestos. The degree of relevancy these manifestos have to the actual art varies. Often there is a disclaimer written about an artist of a particular group that they were really doing their own thing. Reactionary as artists tend to be, many made this statement themselves, declaring they didn't believe in "isms", thus making their manifesto be about rejecting manifestos.

I have an artist's statement which is a kind of statement of purpose trying to put into words this ineffable activity I engage in. If I were to have a manifesto, however, it would be the poem, The Invitation, by a writer known as Oriah Mountain Dreamer. It is truly great. It is with her permission that her work is linked here. Please enjoy the monoprints and keep this poem in mind while viewing all my work, my life's work.

Pink Rectangle Landscape

24" x 18"

oil on panel

You may not think of driving a car when you look at this picture, yet it is influenced by the view I have as a motorist (other influences are the structures of windows and the theatre stage). I spend a lot of time driving through pastoral landscape. The road or highway cuts the the landscape centrally in my line of sight, as in a one-point perspective drawing. While I don't often paint that convergence but rather square it off, the middle remains, flanked by opposing elements. Just as one gets very set in the way one parts one's hair, I find myself drawn to do this repeatedly now; it is cemented in my brain and the picture doesn't look right and is unsatisfying otherwise. It is still too new to be a bad habit in need of breaking (besides, you try to change the way you part your hair). I think it is more a "given" and the experimentation will spring off of it, just as many modern artists used the grid (nifty link, by the way). I am very attracted to the way the central rectangle in this and most of my pictures with this composition can advance or recede. There is something important about the viewing experience of that shift. I think the painting pulses. A warm painting with golden monoliths, it affirms something unnameable but not unknowable.

Late Fall

oil on canvas
36" x 42"

The column filled with gumball-like multi-colored dots gets narrower on top, channeling movement. Optics are a big part of the painting, and I was inspired by an artist once criticized as being a big eye because of his almost scientific approach to color and light. Monet's poplar trees, came to mind to solve the compositional problem of tree trunks amidst leaves. The four vertical streaks of brown/maroon dots add another structural element, in harmony with the three main vertical sections of the painting. Despite the formalities, Monet's paintings aren't cool and unemotional, and neither are mine.

Two black rectangles are like black velvet curtains drawing back to reveal the magical center stage (as close to painting on velvet as I will ever get). They also can be seen as pressing on the center strip, like shorter days in winter and the down turn of the news vs. optimism. I resist letting the dark news be the focal point. I prefer to stay in the frame of mind (I love the at phrase, "frame of mind", like your thoughts fit in a frame, which mine can do, and then there is thinking outside the frame/box...) that Barrack Obama eloquently presented in his acceptance speech as President Elect, "While we breathe we hope." Those dots move as though effervescent, breathing, whimsically bubbling upward. There is blue-sky air, a purple tonality to the bottom, and a golden tonality in the center. The black is not flatly painted but has texture, and colors from underneath richly peak through, signs that it is permeable, vulnerable.

Yellow Sky

oil on panel

20" x 16"

The tropical feel and the red tree remind me of Gauguin. I love his Where do We Come From? What are we? Where are we going? masterpiece at the MFA Boston. He uses rich colors, sometimes bright. I think the sky and the sea in my painting feel somewhat translucent, a luminous blue with orange, the leaves airy, not stiff. Although the geometry is very rectilinear, it breathes. I like the suggestion of leaves on the dark tree on the left. That little triangle has gray marks that hint at what is on the other side, a defining limb curves, echoing the base of the tree. Such subtleties contribute to the impact of the image as a whole, but if a viewer lingers, they are there to be noticed.

Painting provides respite to maker and viewer. The artist is in the unique position of being both. I want to treat myself. I want to see color, space, and light hit my retina. I want to bask in these things.