Only art can make articulate yearning.
I received my artistic training at Yale College and at California College of Art. My works have been collected in the US and abroad, I have pieces at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and at the Weisman Museum of Minneapolis. I have also done installations (one, covering a quarter section, is owned by the Land Institute in Salina, KS) and collaborate with artists of other practices, such as the choreographer Anat Shinar.
I was taught in the figurative tradition, but I also work rather abstractly, and I don’t always have a theme that I want to put forth. I don’t know how I will finish when I start, except that there is something within that I want to express, something that I want to build, something that I want to say. Painting is not the same as speech, even when it is depicting a scene. We leap to story, but it is the story behind the story, behind speech, that is my subject matter.
My work is about longing, time, emotion, loss and recovery. I keep these in mind:
From the contemporary American poet Mary Oliver:
“Attention is the beginning of devotion.”
And from the German romantic poet Holderlin:
“Where danger lies, there deliverance also grows.”
These help me understand the process a bit better, where the painting begins to reveal itself. I was trained to paint every day, and I do so, although much of creation lies in wait for the artist. Conversely, the artist himself must wait for something to happen. Stillness is as important as action.
On my good days I am a painter. On my best moments, I am someone who is trying to uncover and describe something new, so that we can have it within our range of humanity. That should be enough.
