Always I have tried to pack my canvases with meaning, which is to say emotion.  Painting from my imagination propelled the undercurrent of symbolism into my work.  Not an out-and-out type of symbolism, such as the little trinkets in Gauguin's work, or the myriad knickknacks scattered about in Classical paintings, like van Eyck, but a simpler symbolism of stroke.  Brushstrokes and color forms, that while not quite a thing, suggest the thing.  This is the emotion of angle, the symbolism of shape, the color of suggestion.

Schiele does this with his figures, a desirous Cardinal is large and imposing, forcing his way into the form of the penitent Nun, who reveals her own desire by a single hand on the cardinal's arm.  Both figures are kneeling- the ultimate symbol of Catholic purity.  With Schiele, I feel I know those characters in a way that I can never know a Hopper character, or a Degas character.  Some artists are about the form, some the situation, some the color, and some the character.  Of course any artist will use all of these tools, but I mean what the person is intrinsically about.

 

I cannot give up my symbolism, as it is the driving force behind my work.  That I am not very good at it matters none, there is always practice, but to change the root of my philosophy would be to make me not a painter.  I love form and shadow and color, but more, I love the face I'm painting, I love how it interacts with those artistic elements, I want to force my loves into blue and pink and square-rectangle-circle.

 

It is not to say that a painting without metaphor is meaningless, it is simply something different, some do not want symbolism or the mind in their sensual garden- I appreciate the desire, it is painful sometimes to always see more into a thing than there is.

This painting, Jaynish, exhibits a girl with the knack for making plants thrive. I gave her my most precious symbol, the eye-flower. This living, seeing flower represents for me the inimitable bond between human and universe. When the eye-flower is picked from the garden, the figure is ignorant of their own destruction; when the eye-flower springs from the earth, the figure is at peace with the world. I gave Jaynish a growing eye-flower which emerges, spirit-like from her hand, because this figure is a maker, a creator of her world. 

a poem: The Well

The Well

One encounters first

the dark circle

at the lip of a stone

ring. You peer

and wonder, squint

and inhale the breathy

must of water, deeply

rooted in earth.

It’s all smell from

the top, the aroma

of underground rivers;

you are perched

on the work of so many

years spent digging down

to the drinkable

sweet parts,

the hours of devising

who or what

would excavate the dirt

and spill the liquid

up into our hands.

The stones hold the well

open and are wet with plenty,

soaked with the rising

humidity, droplets give

at your fingertips, run

rivulets until tension pools

them again. Your hands

are greedy for moisture,

for the well,

they reach further into

the opening chasm.

Synthesis

Things fall apart ...

A moment taken to hopefully make things come together instead.

Let's give ourselves gravity.

Works for sale on etsy

other available works

Some of my work on Fractals

"The Dimension I'm In" acrylic 3' x 4'

A book I wrote/made called "Dream Food". What's interesting is that the book was literally created from page 1 to the last, and in ink with no pre-sketches. It is an honestly organic expression of my self.



Here is an entire sketchbook I scanned. I don't expect to ever do that again!