artist's statement

Painting in the abstract genre is an opportunity to preserve the mystery that is there before a painting becomes something and tells you everything about itself without your consent. I am often asked what I was thinking about when I created a particular acrylic painting on canvas. Abstract art is initially felt on the level of sensation rather than on conceptual terms and so it is not thinking I am doing but entering into an intimate affair with color. Maybe this explains why viewers sometimes say " I don't know what it is about that painting but I just can't take my eyes off it." One can be attracted to an abstract painting without being able to say exactly why. It is something that can be enjoyed for its own sake without a reason.

Abstract painting is a journey without a foreseeable destination where every sliver of time is subject to unlimited possibility. The freedom is almost overwhelming! Yet in the end, the picture must have a feeling of unity. It is a 'nervie' process in which you need to be willing to take high wire risks while trusting your intuition undeniably.

A completed painting is much more than an accumulative, cold and predetermined process. I have no preconceived expectations when I start (only great expectations) but it is mainly a matter of flow and waiting patiently for inspiration to arrive. Each work takes on a life of it's own that progresses at it's own speed unbounded by any rules of form or time, sometimes taking years before reaching its final still point, a point of internal and external harmony. This is the point I try to recognize as the mysterious moment that paradoxically freezes a flowing, living record of itself into crystalline perfection. Perfection is an ideal worthy of true admiration but a hard-driving muse.

If abstract art has no destination is it really meaningful? Does mystery have meaning? You are invited to spend some time in my virtual studio looking at my work. As you experience a responsive relationship with a painting, it may then, with your participation, become a work of art.