SPACE: an odyssey
acrylic painting on canvas
March 21, 2024
Brandon, VT.
My abstract art has always borne a relationship to photographic images
coming to us from Outer Space. The process whereby I make this work
is the cause. Something about setting into motion paint of varying
viscosities and colors, is aligned with how gasses and stars interact in
space.
I allow paint to range freely on the canvas, the colors colliding and
fusing. New colors appear. Now I have a starting point for creating
cohesive compositions. A conversation begins, back and forth, between
the accidental and the intentional. Whereas Pollock created an arena
for the accidental, I go a next step. I enter the fray as a conscious force.
To keep this conversation fresh, I take little turns to the right and to the
left, in order to modify the process and arrive at variations. Sometimes
you'll see very recognizable images because they were somehow there
and I coaxed them from nebulous fields of color. Intuition and a sense
of play guide my brush.
My approach to these paintings began many years ago, when I moved
away from Photorealism and the New York art world. They evolved very
naturally, culminating in a series of 13 works entitled "13 Moons of the
Magdalene". These were large format abstract paintings that were
inspired by a Feminist version of the story of Mary Magdalene. I
imagined the Magdalene as a sort of inchoate energy that was in a
process of emerging into form–like gasses becoming stars, you could
say. My thought was to try to paint things not yet seen, not yet
formed: things coming into being.
Now, I am inspired by what we are seeing and learning from the James
Webb Space Telescope. Apparently, our theories of cosmology and the
origins of the universe, are being upended by data coming to us from
this marvelous new instrument. As a very amateur physicist (I could
never grok the math), I have my own theories. These involve ideas of
timeless time and space as infinite, shaped like a three-dimensional
spiral. Some of the data coming back to us from the JWST align with my
theories. But that's another conversation!
In these paintings, I celebrate the universe, our home, blazing with
beauty and mystery.