2007 STATEMENT
I started painting without reason, to make a mark, to express and exercise a desire, to make something that visually captured mood, character, places, and things. My work represents all the things I have a passion and desire for. I have an intense urge to express my feelings, experiences and inspirations.
Borrowing from the past
Artists throughout the centuries have looked back on art in the past, and reexamined the history of art that came before them. I too look back on the past, and react, borrowing and sampling from the history that I know.
“A response to the times”
As an artist my work consistently reflects today’s changing world.
My inspiration for my artworks—paintings, drawings, installations, and sculptures—comes from many sources. Inspiration can come from something I saw on the street while walking to the studio; it can be something I read in the daily newspapers. A photo, a picture. A person on the street or in the subway. Inspiration can be a strange and wonderful thing. It can come from out of nowhere, at the most unexpected time, or at the most convenient time. Many of my artworks are a reflection or reaction to my life as an artist, living and working in New York. I feel it is important to create works which are a response to the times, the here and now.
I make statements through my work. I feel, express, and reflect the world around us today. I think it’s important for an artist to be a catalyst for reflection on the world—and nature—as we experience it every day.
In this information age, I am bombarded every minute of every day with media, television shows, movies, frontline news, and street stimulation. My work is an extension of this bombardment, and a reaction to it. The work is an expression of all that enters my mind and body, and then leaves. Filtered by my spirit, my soul, my mind and my aspiration to create.
On Painting
In painting you can state the obvious, or reflect on the conscious or even the subconscious—comment on form, color, shape and line. Painting is at times speaking in an unwritten language. That’s the power of art.
Painting for me is many things. It is about the different between what I feel and what I do. It is the medium of expression, which brings together many ideas and feelings I am experiencing daily thought my life. Color is only one element. There is also the physical act of painting. And there’s the idea, the thought, the essence behind the painting. So much goes into every painting.
The role of the artist at times can be completely different from the act of painting. The action that painting brings about is action in art. The action is the freedom to go about paint without the rules. But to react.
In a sense, I make the rules as I go. I do not subscribe to a perceived notion of what a painting should become specifically. Each painting projects its idea, its statement—itself, in a manner of speaking.
I draw inspiration from German painting, which demonstrates complete freedom. German painters are free to bring in anything—whatever is required to make their visual statements: color, form, ideas, or narrative. The perception and statement of the picture, a visual record of observation, a expression of feeling, of self and of the experiences or thoughts the artist projects in the painting. All is apropos.
I select things because I like them. They speak to me in some intuitive way. I am no different from other people. You walk into a room, and there are things, furniture, chairs, decorations, colors, walls and pictures you like. You may know why or maybe not. As an example, you like the red rug, because you like the color red. Maybe it’s your favorite color. You may know why or you may not. You may just appreciate its aesthetics. When I was a young boy. My mother had our house painted orange with white trim. She liked the color orange. Now I like the color orange.
My work and my method are intuitive and spontaneous. My work flows out from within my nature. Art can change people; it is a reflective catalyst.
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