Most of what I paint is in response to a tradition of representing a figure in a landscape. As a child I lived above Morningside Park in upper Manhattan. I think that a lot of the space I create in painting comes from my experience as a “figure” projected into that landscape. Like a lot of things that have lasting power, it was both fascinating and frightening. Its decrepitude was underpinned by overall dignity and grandeur. Ornate staircases, cornices and balustrades which were slowly succumbing to tenacious weeds and vines, and the artless repairs made to this decay, formed a lasting prospect in my inner topography.
The characters that populate my paintings are my family of archetypes. I try to both embrace and undermine the symbolism of the horse, both ridden and riderless. I employ birds, their nests, and eggs of all forms, including square (suggested by the dedication of waterfowl who will accept even a cube as replacement for its egg). The female character is a romanticized version of my youthful self. Balustrades in their abundance of roles representing positive and negative space evolve from my original Morningside Park association into a fascination with pure geometric pattern. My first viewings of Borromini’s experiments with inversions in this architectural detail in loggias and altars, especially in San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane in Rome, inspired me to explore this potential. Ultimately, my “adjusted” landscapes are places that, often with humor, mesh likely and unlikely compositional integrity. A painting that holds together by mysterious rather than obvious forces is most interesting to me.
I am always fascinated by the way that we seek to order and “improve” on nature by rearranging landscape and using architectural elements to frame it, and how nature is always quietly pursuing its own plans. Goethe’s Elective Affinities, which I read in my 20s, brought this issue as historical theme to my attention. In that novella, tragedy follows man’s attempts to control and subdue nature. My work visits an aspect of that drama, but my goal is ultimately to tangle, cut and retie the relationship of the physicality of the paint and what it represents.
The characters that populate my paintings are my family of archetypes. I try to both embrace and undermine the symbolism of the horse, both ridden and riderless. I employ birds, their nests, and eggs of all forms, including square (suggested by the dedication of waterfowl who will accept even a cube as replacement for its egg). The female character is a romanticized version of my youthful self. Balustrades in their abundance of roles representing positive and negative space evolve from my original Morningside Park association into a fascination with pure geometric pattern. My first viewings of Borromini’s experiments with inversions in this architectural detail in loggias and altars, especially in San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane in Rome, inspired me to explore this potential. Ultimately, my “adjusted” landscapes are places that, often with humor, mesh likely and unlikely compositional integrity. A painting that holds together by mysterious rather than obvious forces is most interesting to me.
I am always fascinated by the way that we seek to order and “improve” on nature by rearranging landscape and using architectural elements to frame it, and how nature is always quietly pursuing its own plans. Goethe’s Elective Affinities, which I read in my 20s, brought this issue as historical theme to my attention. In that novella, tragedy follows man’s attempts to control and subdue nature. My work visits an aspect of that drama, but my goal is ultimately to tangle, cut and retie the relationship of the physicality of the paint and what it represents.
