I was involved in art from childhood, using various media, drawing, painting, sculpture in clay. My expression included imaginative forms reflecting personal thoughts, and having somewhat of a surrealist affinity. Then, within the two years prior to going to France, I began doing paintings, primarily in oil, from the model; in some of these, I was interested in portraying people in relationship. Subsequently, the impact of the landscape in the Luberon region of southern France led to a shift in my attention: I became interested in relationships not so much between persons, but between shapes and colors, lines and forms within the landscape. I worked on large
canvasses outdoors, in the landscape, with the challenge of changing light, sun and shadow, hot or cold, brisk breeze, insects, and so many variables, offering a setting very different from working in a studio.
Two paintings express this focus on relationships between forms in the landscape -- “The Separations” -- and then my growing sense of a close connection with the landscape, “Coniunctio”.
Paintings sometimes involve quick strokes, reflecting on the environment, picking up on an ambiance, or my impressions, of a place or situation. Other times I have wanted to work from observation of the landscape, taking in carefully details of a view for long hours or days. The painting “Brook with Trees”, Oil on canvas, shown in the “Art as Visual Language” section, was worked on for over four months. The photo here shows the situation of painting on site outdoors; as the autumn was turning cold, I sometimes made a fire. The painting, “Poplars by Brook”, oil on canvas, is of the same two trees as are facing each other in “Brook with Trees”.
Over the years, there has been this oscillation between the more representative, and the more expressive. Most of the works shown here on the website now were done in the Luberon in France. Some were done in Greece, and some were done upon return from Greece.
The “Canvas as Ground” series is a series of large paintings, of acrylic on raw (unprimed) linen or canvas, sometimes with colored pigments. (In the Luberon, there is a local tradition of obtaining ochre pigment from ochre cliffs.) In the first several paintings of the series, large brushstrokes honor the blue of the sea, and the white of houses on a Greek island. One of these is: “In the Sea, Looking Toward Shore”. In these “Canvas as Ground” paintings, the canvas partly represents the earth ground, especially when done on the raw linen, the color and texture of which shows through the simple and direct paint-strokes.
These evolved into a return to the French Luberon “ground’ with several large paintings: “Creature Flying Over a Beloved Landscape" and “Blue Flame."
The following two large paintings (oil on canvas), take further the “Canvas as Ground” approach, where elements become more complex, maintaining the large direct brushstrokes, yet relating not to the sea, but to landscape and figure:
“Woman Drinking from the Cup of Heaven.”
“Woman Being Devoured By Stars”
------------------
*One painting, of a theme of couples:
“Stay, Walk in Our Seas of Mist....” (Relates to a poem, “Reste, Cher Ami”.)
-------------------------------
*Luberon Landscape observed:
Pastels:
“Poppies in the Cherry Tree Rows.”
“Lavender, Wheat (near the Place of Lucien’s Childhood)”
“Lavender”
---------------------
Oil Paintings:
“Bales in Clover Field, Ventoux”.
“Toward Lacoste, Lone Sheep, Autumn”
“Cherry Blossoms, Misty Morning.”
----------------- --------------------
*From a series of small paintings, acrylic on board, the first two of Greece, the others the
Luberon:
“Patmos, Sea and Small Islands”
“Early Spring, Greek Island”
“These Vineyards, This Earth, Sacred Writing?”
“Jacob’s Ladder”
“Lacoste, Winter Corner’s nearing Spring”
----------------------
*Theme of “icons” (however, within what I could call a personal interpretation): Two of the paintings shown here, “Annunciation (Without Madonna)”, and “Madonna Disguised as a Luberon Cherry Tree in Bloom”, were done in anticipation of an exhibit in Moscow, as the exhibit was to be near the Kremlin, thus near its churches. Another, “Resurrection”, was done later.
------------------------------------------------
*A series of lavender paintings, (along with the prior pastels): in addition to whatever composition or landscape forms may catch one’s attention for a painting, there is the additional extraordinary quality of working in proximity to the lavender fields -- the color, the hum of bees, the scent of the lavender…
Lavender, Cyprus, Bonnieux
Lavender, Vineyard, Village
Lavender, Willow, toward Bonnieux
---------------------------
“Poppies, Luberon, Cloud.” Gouache, acrylic on board, 10” x 6”, June 2002
-----------------------
*Painting Works on paper:
“We Thought to Sing to You”. Detail of large format 44.5” x 31.8”, colored pencils, ink, acrylic
on paper. (Based on a “free drawing” with poem, “We Thought to Sing to You”.)
“If we survive the Sixth Extinction, we can have a big party”
“Next time, there will be no Noah’s Ark”
