Glimmerings

There is a sense that things simply arrive or else have been there, waiting for me. There is a rhythm, each thing to its place. These elements of ephemera represent pauses; a place where I bent down for a closer look, an irrelevance that became relevant beneath the caress of my primate thumb. A place where the world stopped me, where stillness reclaimed me.

I want to be willing to allow it to remain a mystery, the reason for this absurd marionette, this playing-at-god: fragment- suspended between idea and material. How does this peace utter the particularity of a wound, the mission of this insignificant-essential Atom?

building a boat

Building a boat.
(after Mary Oliver - i think)

I have arrived.
And there is no land in sight.
All the warnings – caution and reason – don't reach very far
into the depths; that version of life where you know
what you’re doing, has a short chain.

I am tried-on, systematically burned:
flame runs up mouldy curtains and alights upon roof,
catches the near hills, gives birth to a sun.
Silver0gold lances graze the broken steeples
wearing the skirts of endless waves.

Pit bull lunges at shadow jolting coffee, woman, fingers-and-cigarette suspended behind. This is a shabby age.
A transitional age. Things are floating by. So I
just build a boat with the debris within reach.

Texture, Time & History

I wanted to see how far I could take texture and what I might compose using old books. Old books have long captivated and haunted me: hand-bound, ink-imprinted on brittle, tissue, parchment pages; Times, Serif, Lawless, Black No.7. London, New York, Paris, Berlin. Fragments of thoughts on torn pages: gateways into the mind of a far-away other.

I took these pieces of history, these artifacts with their words and I thought of opening a window or doorway into a part of myself I didn't know yet. Openings take time: these took a couple of months – reveries of mind and material. Fragments showed through as I added or removed layer upon layer to the surfaces. Like memory or a slow recognition, bits of text, shape or color emerged like trail signs in a twilight wood.

When a thing is framed by space, no matter how ordinary, it becomes singular, intriguing, unfamiliar, perhaps even beautiful, seen for itself. Removed from context, it becomes a surface upon which to project our Self. We can enter and dwell within it, bringing a kind of vividness to the garage sale of mundane doings.

These paintings are abstract, non-representational, recruiting imagination and eluding rational orientations. I invite you to pause, dwell momentarily before one that takes your attention. Perhaps you will discover some sense of recognition or magnetism: a hue, the quality of an edge, a texture, the character in a shape. Enter that.

Visit the Gallery to see New Work now on display at
Public Eat/Drink, North Adams, MA.

Intangible Art Show at #Local Gallery: September 14 - October 6.

Opening September 14th 5-8pm

Art Talk/Champagne Friday September 27th 6-8pm.
Come hear about the process, source of inspiration and how this art might serve a bigger picture this Friday at #Local Gallery in Easthampton, MA.

Small Works Gallery Show

Unexpected Visitations

Practice is a frame into which I pour my mind. It is a method of alignment, a point of orientation. My practice sessions have a score: I mark the edges, define the area of inquiry, lay out aspirations. Yet an equal measure of unguarded territory is necessary. A door must be left ajar for unexpected visitations. In every session, I reserve time for improvisation. Improvisation is where seeds of the best work are dropped. When expectation is abandoned and agendas are replaced with listening, waiting and attention, this is when beauty that I could not have planned emerges. (From Voicings from Underground; The Slow World p 60)