Artist Statement
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In my recent paintings, a brilliant light obliterates the landscape, leaving only a remnant along the edges of the canvas. It is the effect we all know so well: a very bright light makes it hard to see, hard to pick out the details in our field of vision. It is quite literally a blinding light.
Over the past decade or so light has gradually come to dominate my paintings. The paintings have become brighter, lighter, sparser, as the immediately visible landscape is relegated to the edges of the canvas. I am excavating the landscape, digging into it to reveal what lies behind or beneath appearances; and what I see I express as light. This is not the light that shines on a landscape from without, but the light that illuminates everything from within. It burns away all particulars and distinctions and leaves only itself.
These are paintings that require a time commitment from the viewer; the viewer must be willing to dedicate time to the painting in order to fully see it. Over the course of five, ten, fifteen minutes, and as the viewer’s eyes adjust, additional information becomes visible. The viewer will begin to see additional colors and images that may not have been immediately apparent. The painting reveals itself over time.
Climate change is the backdrop for my paintings. The thesis of the paintings is that in order to change our relationship to our environment, we need to first revise our self-understanding; we need to transition to a different self-awareness. In the paintings I explore the transition between two competing paradigms for framing and understanding our identity, between our current socially constructed individual (and detached) self, and our fundamental oneness with all, including our planet.
My earlier paintings address the process of transition, examined through the imagery of natural disasters. With calamities like natural disasters, we often acquire a new awareness. Certainly, the recent and alarming natural disasters make us more aware of climate change and the damage we are inflicting on our planet. But calamities, metaphorically considered, can also be markers of the transition into a new self-awareness, a transition that can sometimes be experienced as cataclysmic.
The imagery of my recent paintings suggests what the transition into a new self-awareness may look like. The reference to natural disasters has disappeared and in its stead a brilliant light is uncovered. In the paintings the particulars and details of ourselves and our world float on the surface or on the edges of an intense and unifying light.