Artist Statement

I’m not a painter…

In spite of the fact that you are viewing many of my works, which are primarily created using oil paints, I don’t consider myself a painter. I think of myself as a communicator, like a speechwriter, newspaper reporter, orator, or even in some aspects, a politician. I compose my ideas and try to present them in a manner that others can experience the way I feel while creating the composition. But where a speechwriter or reporter uses words to ply their trade, I am an artist, therefore I use the language of imagery to state my feelings and opinions. This imagery may vary from photography, to painting with realism, to figurative abstract, or even involve elements of found-object collage and assemblage. It may also vary from simple emotions like joy and contentment to more complex feelings such as fear, love and sadness. It is the process of communicating my ideas that is important more than the media used. In fact, it is the creative process of the communication that is important to me. While I am working on a piece, I am emotionally tied to it to the point of distraction. It becomes the sole focus of what I am doing. However, when I bring a piece to completion, the emotional attachment dissolves. I don’t feel the post partum effect that some artists talk about as much as I feel as though I’ve committed a captured moment of my essence and released it to the ether. The way a spoken word floats ever outward into space.

Friday, October 5, 2007

From Dad to Brookes


From Dad to Brookes
Oil on Canvas
42 inches x 78 inches
2006

I did this painting soon after me and Carrie bought the farm that I was raised in. It is meant to show the relationship between my father, Dan, and my stepson, Brookes and how they are connected through me and the farm. Dad died 3 years before I ever met Brookes so they never knew each other. I try to give the sense of the past in the vignette of my parents in the background along with the aerial view of the farm at the time they purchased it in 1962. The house in the midground is how it appeared when we bought it from the estate. I use the placement of the figures eyes to tell the story: Mom is looking at Dad which shows the unity they shared through the hard times to keep the farm and pay it off. Dad is looking towards Brookes as the future inheritor of the property. While both Carrie and I engage the viewer directly with our gaze, it is with very different content. My gaze is of uneasy protective watchfulness. I step to the side allowing the viewer to come in, but only so far. My left eye is on the viewer but it is proportionally too large for my face, emphasizing it's watchfulness. Carrie's smiling eyes are an invitation to the viewer to behold the life we now have and the family she is so proud of. Only Brookes does not directly look to a given figure. He is staring past his parents, as we all must do at some point, to his own place in the world yet knowing that this farm will always be some part of him as well.

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