Thaw #2

18 x 24 oil on panel

Whites of melting snow give away to green grass. The top center is a focal point, a restful blue-gray sky. The painting is similar to my abstractions done in 1998 and exhibited at Villanova University. Light lines form a frame, an artificial spatial point that takes the painting into a metaphorical realm, a platonic conception of thawing winter. Matisse did it with chairs, for example. Rather than a rendering of a chair, his depictions are the idea of chairs, re situated in artificial, fantastical rooms partially observed, partially imagined. On a grimmer note, Andy Warhol's electric chairs' repetitiveness produced via silkscreen are also about the concept of an electric chair and all the ethical questions tied to it. Presenting any picture, photograph, painting, whatever, of an electric chair comes with the baggage of the moral debate over capital punishment. Art works this way, inevitably symbolic. Portraits can be seen as emblematic of the human condition despite the specificity of a particular person in time through the eyes of a particular artist, likewise for Christian art. Rodin and Camille Claudel's figurative sculptures are great examples. Airy and cold, Thaw #2 is my experience and concept of winter.

Yellow Arch

8"x 9"

watercolor

This painting is about bright fall days, crisp blue skies, and growing things. The dots are appropriate in the sense of jubilation they convey. The focal point is the white area under the center of the trees where the green converges and the blue slips down. Different elements come together harmoniously. It is not a painting about problems - world problems, personal problems, worries. It is a release from worries.

"WHAT I dream is an art of balance, of purity and serenity devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter, an art that might be for every mental worker like an appeasing influence; something like a good armchair . . ." - Henri Matisse

If anyone checks out my blog of archives, Before Art Weekly, they will see that aligning with Matisse's philosophy isn't always my goal. I've painted my night terrors. My more recent work, including this painting, is not about the upset. I think it is important to be restored. I'm not out to be your hot tub are equivalent, but to represent the beauty I experience in hope that you see it too. I'm imagining it but I'm not imagining it. Dreams are like that.