oil on canvas
52" x 30"
PRIVATE COLLECTION
PRIVATE COLLECTION
I often see or think of things that make me smile. The dots will hopefully have that effect on you, especially while looking at the originals, where they might come into view unexpectedly. The dots sometimes seem surprising as you scan the surface. During a grad school crit, Nigel Rolfe remarked of my paintings, “the color wants to reward you.” This quality persists.
A comment (thanks, Rob) about the blurry but beautiful effect of seeing Christmas lights without glasses (for nearsightedness) is not off the mark. Christmas comes at the darkest time of the year and the lights we decorate with are attempts to restore some of the absent daylight. The light and color in my paintings also aim to lift spirits. The combinations of colors often make me smile as do a flock of birds turning in the wind, a patch of sun, pink toenail polish, and a dog whisker found while sweeping. This list is parallel to Rodger and Hammerstein’s My Favorite Things from The Sound of Music. Meant also to cheer one’s self, it funny that some of the lyrics include wild geese, the moon/sun, and kitten whiskers, not unlike my own favorite things. John Coltrane’s version (available to sample in I-Tunes) embodies the philosophy. In that way my paintings celebrate the silver lining.
On a similar note, in a The New York Times article Bruno Shultz, a Polish-Jewish artist killed in the Holocaust is heralded for creating paintings that help one "get through the long winter."
2 comments:
When I see this, it makes me think of your taking a filter you might find in an image editing program like Photoshop and applying it to the canvas. It also reminds me in some way of looking at a printed page through a magnifying glass or microscope with all its tiny dots enlarged.
Pointilists were a little ahead of their time with regard to pixels. I think the different filters in Photoshop are neat and while that technology and way of seeing can't help but influence, I also am sure that the process of a human making the dots out of an alchemical substance like paint conveys much more. So your comment is completely relevant and I just want to expand on the work's relationship with technology.
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