My entire adult life
as a practicing painter has been spent believing in
the persuasive power of painting; more specifically,
in how representational painting can transform the
activity of direct observation of the live model in
real time and space into meaningful , pictorial structure.
My observation of the live model, like Vermeer, Chardin,
Ingre, Degas is not about a desire to possess, rather
a desire to contemplate and evaluate the nature of
appearance. I want to experience observation, to bring
it close, to examine, interpret, to look ‘for’,
not ‘at’. Observation is discriminatory,
hence the basis for self knowledge. Nor is my work about
verisimilitude of appearance. ‘Likeness’ is
a necessary step which occurs in varying degrees and
through which representational painting must pass on
its way to wherever it is going. It is not the reason
for serious representational painting, just a condition
of its being.
I agree with the idea that art must
be persuasive as art first before it can be so in any
other capacity. My painting style is intentionally
restrictive with respect to overt contextualization
of social and political issues. I consider my work
as a principled detachment from introspection and overt
narrative. Nothing happens, in a sense, in my paintings.
They do not engage narrative expression of emotions.
I address my painting as a ‘construct’ in
which associative concerns interweave with the formal
conventions of picture making. Hence, I place importance
on the traditional idea of a painting being an expression
of ‘composed thought’. Accordingly, my paintings
are both tempered and stimulated by the tradition of
representational painting, and the pictorial conventions
therein. To deny that tradition is to speak with a very
limited vocabulary. Alex Katz, the American figurative
painter, told me during a graduate critique many years
ago that to do so is to ‘paint in a closet’.
I have never forgotten that remark. I believe my painting
requires patience, in the making and in the viewing,
with regard to how meaning can spring forth from the
seemingly simple act of observation. I think Degas said
it best when he said: “There is no image less spontaneous
than my own.”
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