In The Rain

Detail.

Detail.

Detail.

Vulnerabilities Of Truth

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable… A quote by C.S. Lewis.

The notion of being vulnerable might sound like weakness, but knowing the vulnerabilities exist and embracing them fully makes a person strong. To be vulnerable is to be real, for even the strongest, such as tigers, are vulnerable. In the series One Hundred Years Of Solitude, my art focuses on certain themes central to our emotional and social existence and what makes us human.

The painting is not a depiction of a fantasy. The subjects can be interpreted as metaphors for the fragilities of life — maybe not actual tigers crossing our path, but rather the impediments, emptiness, imminent dangers, deaths, and waning memories, that we all, if we’re being truthful, must inevitably encounter in life, and through which we must make decisions and push forward.

Detail.

Detail.

Detail.

The Portraiture Concept

Many of us have probably strolled through halls or white rooms with portrait after portrait of seemingly the same portrait over and over, dulling our overall impression of the concept of portraiture. But if we free our minds of categorizing, historical chronologies, and overbroad groupings, by isolating each work of art as its own entity, then I think the dullness of the portraiture idea disappears. 

I think the concept of portraiture will never vanish as it applies to painting. There is an intrigue with the way a person can interpret and represent another person through lines and colors -- it's organic and human -- something that can't be replaced by machines or any other form of art. I don't mean to say that artists should just repeat what's been done in the past; to the contrary, the challenge remains, as it does with all forms of art, to create something fresh and original. 

Freshness and originality are not defined by mere subject matter. They just require creating something beyond what is known. Whatever that means. Undefined by their very nature.

Here are two styles I've been working on. Whether these paintings are fresh and original, I'll let you decide.

Left: Seated Woman, 24" x 18", oil, acrylic, ink, canvas. 

Right: Woman On Couch, 50" x 36", oil, acrylic, ink, canvas.

Field

While the subject matter is rather simple, this painting took a long time to complete, and the process was somewhat representative of the storms we face in our own minds. Sometimes we encounter chaos in the commonality. 

I used some pearlescent paints in the blues and purples, and the colors therefore shift depending on where you stand, the angle upon which you view it. The effect can't be duplicated in the small unmoving image on a computer screen. The actual painting is six feet wide.

Field (detail)

Field, 45" x 72", oil, acrylic, ink, canvas, 2016.