Painting and Photography based in Falls Village, CT.

 

This selection of work documents my process of artistic development over time. The paintings are arranged with the most recent at the top working down toward the earlier work. They are not dated on this site and I tend to work in series. I started by drawing at The Art Students League and my first paintings were figurative. All my studies were done from the model, in charcoal, not the full figure but details, commingling the figurative and abstract. I thought of this as an almost basic grammatical way forward. I trained myself to paint, from figure to abstraction. All the work is connected logically in my mind, from one step to another, like following a string in the dark, leading you home.

Having trained as a surgeon I realized that surgery can be seen as a basic form of abstraction. The operating field, frame and scale, are walled off from the patient as a whole and surgery proceeds layer by layer much as a canvas and scale are chosen to initiate the making of a mark and the subsequent marks that follow through action/reaction and a visual cognitive logic. I don't deny the surgical influence on my  way of seeing. This ultimately represents a process of destruction and construction leading toward unity.

The photos are a mix of documentation, formal composition and the abstraction in the everyday.