Artist Statement & Bio

Jazz musician Bill Evans wrote, “Keep searching for that sound you hear in your head until it becomes a reality.” His description of creating music is similar to my approach to painting. Evans begins with a theme or sound that he hears internally. He searches for his sound through improvisation, variation, and iteration, using knowledge and skill gained through practice and methodical exploration of relationships between notes and phrases, in collaboration with the other musicians on stage or in the studio.
 

My process involves beginning with a visual image I’ve internalized from my surroundings, then I work until that image is realized in physical space. I achieve this through improvisation, variation, and methodical exploration of the relationship of color, form, and composition. Each painting is a collaboration with my most proximal artistic influences: Karl Benjamin, Elsworth Kelly, Helen Lundeberg, Agnes Martin, and Barbara Hepworth. Benjamin and Kelly were master colorists who worked in hard-edge abstraction. Lundeberg reinterpreted her visual experience of light and shadows in her surroundings to create abstract paintings. My goal is to make artwork that recreates for the viewer the same meditative feeling I experience when viewing paintings by Agnes Martin or the serene beauty conveyed through Hepworth’s sculptures.

While the result of my artistic process is hard-edge, color-field paintings that can be read as pure abstraction, each painting is a translation of physical reality into an abstract form. I observe shapes, light, and shadow of architectural spaces and physical objects in my surroundings.  The initial conceptual image may be derived from a photograph of a chance encounter while out and about, or a familiar view seen daily through a door or window. I begin by sketching a range of depictions from careful naturalistic reproduction to rapid improvisational strokes. Through this process, I reduce the image to essential elements and develop a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between shapes within the composition. I continue to explore the original image through variation, distortion, and rearrangement of individual shapes to create new configurations. Eventually one version rises to the surface and becomes an almost intrusive presence that I am compelled to create as a painting. Once I commit to apply oil paint to canvas, I make a series of five to seven iterations, keeping the form the same while varying the color arrangement. Some paintings are complications of the initial form; others are simplified to essential elements. This methodical process may take several years from initial conception to a final work as I keep searching for the painting I see in my head until it becomes a reality.