Edward Hopper once said “Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist.”   This statement reminds me that great art can stem from the ambiguity and mysterious functions of the inner subconscious.  It strengthens my ideas about the visual or aesthetic statements taking place in art, and how there may be several answers to one simple question.  The beauty in communicating these fundamental human concerns such as spirit and faith, or honesty and truth can be discussed in a forum that goes outside the lines. Great art is the place where we encounter ideas that are not so popular.  It becomes a space for us to tackle the important questions about life, about who we are, what makes us tick.  As an artist, my goal is to explore this inner life, find ways to continue this subconscious stream onto canvas, while keeping the demands for interpretation at bay.  Those demands of interpretation can diminish the ambiguity of the most creative features of a work.

In my latest work, there is no definite meaning, but rather a theatrical stage set of emotional representations and memories.  The compositional techniques of the paintings reference a photographic framework of personal experiences through a thought driven perspective.  My choice in oil painting allows me to fulfill a need to make the thoughts and visions permanent but rendered in a loose and painterly application.  The places and the ideas of the paintings are consistent and/or coherent as a body of work in that they share pieces of my own aesthetic criteria, my subconscious on canvas, and my love of landscapes.

Painting has become a lifelong lesson in terms of process, technique, and methodology.  It’s also a lesson I am willing to learn and fully participate in.  The fulfillment of painting has granted me a second life.  It has provided me with a forum to seek out the mysterious functions of life, and display a personal perspective.  It allows me to participate in a world sensitive to the undercurrent of the outside world.  I may not be at the end of this journey, but it sometimes feels like I have a finger on the pulse, and an eye to observe the beauty that may be fleeting or temporary.  Like the Romantics of the past, I am in awe of the sublime.