College Art Association 1997 Presentation

Bridging the Gap between Abstract and Representational

I'd like to start with 2 pictures by Picasso, one a collage called the Minator, 1933 and the other a still life called Green Still life.

I don't believe there has been another artist who has examined painting from more angles, from image, line, form shape and color than Picasso.   My admiration for this artist crept up on me as I learned my craft.   I mention him as an inspiration for experimentation in painting.

Because I am involved in traditional themes in Painting such as portraiture and still life, adding a 3-dimensional surface expands the depth of these traditions.

I would like to quote from a recent NY Times article summing up the cultural year in the arts.   The article was written by Edward Rothstein it was called “Trend-Spotting: It's All The Rage.”

            I just wanted to read an exert from it about tradition:

Tradition also provides a context for culture, a home.   Artists work within a tradition; they are nestled by it, challenged by it, oppressed by it, but they cannot fully discard it.   Trends nestle nobody.   Tradition can be cautious to a fault; trends can be reckless to a fault.   Tradition demands as active creator who tries to mold it for new purposes; trends create passive participants.   Tradition requires dedication: “If you want it,” wrote T. S. Eliot, “you must obtain it by great labor.”   A trend is almost always a cliche, always something that is widely accepted, requiring no proof; it attracts followers rather than leaders, crowds rather than individuals.   (Trends can grow into traditions, but this is a long process requiring commitment, interest and labor.

Why I'm making 3-dimensional paintings?   Is it a reaction to flat, slick illusionistic images from photographs, television, and mass media and now computer generated images- I would have to say yea partially.  

  But also, you have to really encounter painting; it is the total experience- physically, sensually and intellectually.   Making a painting dimensional enhances the experience of really having “seen it.”

I find traditional themes such as portraiture and still life as valid today as ever.   The expansion of information has changed our perception of reality.   We acknowledge many abstract ideas- we are skeptical- the truth is very specific.

I want to include in my work my awareness of the unseen .   Worlds within worlds- macro space to micro space- beliefs on top of beliefs.

I achieve a montage effect by the use of a 3-dimensional surface.   I propose that the use of a 3-dimensional surface helps me bridge the gap between the abstract and representational.

The creation of a 3-dimensional surface in my paintings was a slow process.   One of my first bodies of work 15 years age, were simple “figure-8 paintings.   The tension created by color and the physicality of the paint leads me to emphasizing the paintings natural curving tendencies.   I created a wire-mesh stretcher that crested and waved.

The result was an irregular shaped canvas.   I have always wondered about feminine aesthetics, a generalization for sure but a tendency toward the tactile, the curved, and the real.

I started seeing my “figure-8's” as energies- electrons –atoms-molecules- then the energies as figures and soon the figures as individuals.

The surfaces were like the reflection on water- the representational image was distorted.

I started drawing upon ideas about water and I began scuba diving.   I mention scuba diving because for me it was an experience of actually seeing the birthplace of life- primordial life forms, shapes and colors.   It was like being in the inside of our body.

In 1987 I began working with corrugated plastic.   Instead of the whole image shifting- now only aspects of it did.   For me, shapes have meaning.   I compounded shapes and images.

I was able to make abstract compositions and than combine them with images- at the time- mostly portraits I painted from my own photographs.   Photography became my sketchbook.

These paintings could be abstract or representational- however you want to look at them.   Painterly “vignettes” would be captured on the corrugated cutouts when viewed close-up.   It is my belief that the best representational paintings are great illusions and abstractions.

My paintings now look like momentary thoughts or memories in fluctuation- complete and incomplete fragmented. It's the surface of water again and just before a current totally obliterates it's reflected image.

Besides wanting to put a contemporary spin on traditional themes, as portraiture and still life my paintings became rectangular or square.   It's as if some connections to traditional painting I do not want to part with.

I used corrugated plastic for a couple of years.   Then I decided I wanted to make larger paintings and I needed to change the scale of the undulating surface.   I call this material my “sine waves.”

I started making fiberglass sheets 4 x 8 feet and then cutting this sheet into shapes with a utility scissors of mat knife.   My process for painting became quite a sculptural, physical activity.   But again, I have no interest in sculptures that are paintings or paintings that are sculptures.   The focus of my work is image making not object making.   No matter how sculptural my process or dimensional the painting- my concern is the image.

Fiberglass is nasty stuff- I stopped using it.   It's too toxic.   Now I bend low gage aluminum into a wave 4 x8 feet.   I glue polycanvas on it and then like the fiberglass, I rabbit skin glue linen to it.   My process is still evolving to get the best adhesion.

The aluminum is more flexible then the fiberglass so I use more staples to fix them in place.   The shapes I cutout are stapled to a luan stretcher that is covered with linen or canvas.   Although sometimes I just staples to wood and paint on it.

My paintings have a rough and crude look to them.   The protruding pieces are sharp and edgy.   They need dusting and you cannot brush by them.   They are fragile in someway, but all paintings are.

The image is disquieting; it has a strong psychological tectonic appearance.   I use the word tectonic to explain the shifting plates on the surface of my canvas.   Tektonikus in Greek means builder, I like the notion of building my images.   Reality has many planes and surfaces.

Since the shapes are stapled to the canvas-covered board or wood- the staples show and the construction of the painting is obvious.   Sometimes I hide a staple under another overlapping shape.

Very often in my 3-dimensional work the underside is left unpainted.   It is the unknown.   The representational image is seen coming apart at the seams when not viewed strait on.   It's like a dream, when you try to put it into a linear format- it just doesn't go back together or “things” don't make sense.

Now in 1997 with 10 years of making these 3-dimensional paintings with my own process, I can both totally control the 3-dimensional shapes and cut them into an image or I can make composition and let an image come to me.

Unlike Picasso whose work in abstraction generally fit together like a puzzle, my dimensional shapes do not necessarily reinforce the representational image.   Some have said, “the shapes sit dormant on top of the paintings- my rebuttal is “I want the viewer to be aware of the incongruent and harmony of different forms in reality.

For me painting is a process of revelation, not intention.

Many painters comment that my work looks fun to make.   My work is a joy to make and it is this vitality that the dimensionality brings to the tradition of painting.

My work is not about dimensionality.   I use a 3-dimensional surface in my paintings as an element of painting: as a part of the vocabulary of painting.   Together with line, form, shape, color and texture, my images reveal their poetry.

My work is a testament not to art, not to painting but to our time.

Inclosing I would like to quote Matisse.   In 1908, at the age of 39, Matisse submitted his first public statement about art:

       “A painter who addresses the public not in order to present his work but to reveal some of his ideas on the art of painting, exposes himself to several dangers.

He goes on… I fear that one will look with astonishment upon the painter who ventures to invade the domain of the literary man.   I am fully aware that a painter's best spokesman is his work.

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