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| Nevada Falls and Glacier Point, 1993, along with Site paintings, 2008. |
Each has its flavor neither good nor bad but just different in perspective. Illusion though is bad I think as the thing a painter tries to do is show truth. Illusion then is held in check by formal means. It is what good painitng is about. The space which goes back and then snaps back forward.
Each space adds a different perspective. As the viewer neither is best again they are different and one sees different things in each then juxtaposed there is another level of difficulty which is rewarding to think and see about.
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| Larger Studio painting along with Site paintings. |
These are newer Site paintings from a recent tour of painting. The larger Studio paintings are from 1993. I had a large show at Tony Shafrazi Gallery in that year, I continue to make large studio paintings from these Site paintings. I don't like the name plein air as it seems set as a tradition and I try to go further than this norm while preserving the vital reality of that tradition.
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| Site paintings from Glacier Point Yosemite National Park. |
In my system I enlage the work in my studio finding simpler shape and color reations. I add a figure which is a heightening to me. Their outlined form is a formal idea which separate the figure from the ground an abstract principal I am interested in.
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| Glacier Point, Blue Imagination, 1993, 10 x 12', o/c. |
In this series, I went further and pushed the painting into decline, It was to me a metaphor relating to early Renaissance frescoes, I love. This phase allowed a cycle to happen in my work. It tied a past to a new future of painting.
This is a more difficult moment to understand but worth thinking about as it has become the idea of my work.
From this fragmented state I progressed to all black and white paintings which were a deeper space and past moment depicted.
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| Aspen Paintings from 2004. |
I am satisfied at times with just the simple abstraction and play of shape and color, with their reference also to the reality of the Site painting's experience preceding this.
This is why I would never paint from a photo and don't even think of it. The information I use is not contained in photography. The invented shapes, simple color relationships, and line.
I had as a subject for these western paintings the Western Jaunt, I called it that after a poem by Walt Whitman. It had the flavor of the Open Road maybe a bit more Whitman than Kerouac, although I approach a more profane reality brought on by the actual reality one we face in our contemporary time.
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| Book of Nature |
Emerson talks of the Book of Nature and says that natural facts are spiritual facts. One sees this if one is actually there or actually faced with the actuality of the painting's presence.
There is a journey if you will between the Site painting and the Studio painting.
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| Pfeiffer Beach, Big Sur, CA. |
This is largely about experience and being there in that moment.
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| Big Sur Ocean and "..end of distance." |
The Studio painting moves into abstraction and a distance from nature. It creates a desire to go paint once again--out there and I go off each spring with a renewed strength for it.
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| Big Sur Ocean. |
The Studio painting tells who I am and hopefully reflects the culture I am a part of as you too are. The Site painting deals with a continued not knowing which we all face when, out there-- the distance and change one sees is profound and has created a philosophical way of seeing things and my life.
In these paintings I was mainly trying to make a group of works central to my aim in the landscape. My paintings since progress further into the cycle I spoke of above.
"and yet why is it unfound?" words of Whitman's, Facing Pacific Shores-- he wonders at the relation of geography and western movement and well "are there any answers to be found?"
I would reply maybe not besides the journey in itself, which these paintings are the result.
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| "..end of distance." |
