why
The body does not forget. It carries with it the divergent paths of emotion. These memories twist and wind like lightning loops, flaring at intervals and then diffusing before we ever get a chance to witness them visually. But the body does not forget. To access these memories, to cast light on these sentiments, I can be found as the sun rises in my studio on the North Shore of Long Island, spreading jars of washy watercolor on sheets of cotton paper, my arm summoning ambient passages of memory, as a shaman in a storm. My hand taps to the rhythm of primordia, episodes of emotion which cannot be expressed but in the patter of paint.
To further harness the visual collateral from the visceral memory, I intermittently scratch, push and drop intensely pigmented ink along the surface of the newly dampened sheets of watercolor paper. I pull from my palette with full-bellied brushes, swiftly applying the once well defined colors and watching them advance and form new colors spreading across the cotton horizon, limited only by the papers deckled edge. Visual non - sequiturs roll from my hand, ocean scapes and bowls of cherries, hazy geometry and splashes of undefined white space, plunging skylines that forget their place and dive to the papers bottom, a human menagerie of characters that often surprise my hand as they boldly create the foreground of the painting.
Re- defining the subtext of the Xieyi Shuimo (free hand painting) school of painting by my own parameters, I concurrently consider the work of Nikolay Antonov and Dan Howard to gather from their thrum.
My creative intention is to rid my conscious mind of its overt dictates and allow the spirit of my unconscious to step forward and seize control of the paintbrush. As I render, so I hear the voice of the subconscious impulse, laden with its own impressions.
To further harness the visual collateral from the visceral memory, I intermittently scratch, push and drop intensely pigmented ink along the surface of the newly dampened sheets of watercolor paper. I pull from my palette with full-bellied brushes, swiftly applying the once well defined colors and watching them advance and form new colors spreading across the cotton horizon, limited only by the papers deckled edge. Visual non - sequiturs roll from my hand, ocean scapes and bowls of cherries, hazy geometry and splashes of undefined white space, plunging skylines that forget their place and dive to the papers bottom, a human menagerie of characters that often surprise my hand as they boldly create the foreground of the painting.
Re- defining the subtext of the Xieyi Shuimo (free hand painting) school of painting by my own parameters, I concurrently consider the work of Nikolay Antonov and Dan Howard to gather from their thrum.
My creative intention is to rid my conscious mind of its overt dictates and allow the spirit of my unconscious to step forward and seize control of the paintbrush. As I render, so I hear the voice of the subconscious impulse, laden with its own impressions.
