Artist’s Statement

The proportions of the bones in our hands, the distances between the planets in our solar system and Katsushika Hokusai’s Great Wave at Kanagawa block print all share a kind of common set of rules. That rule is Phi. I also try to follow this Golden Proportion with my paintings and sculpture.

I explore the forms and patterns inherent in landscape to work with the principle. Landscape serves as a scaffold or platform over which I play with abstract concerns. Just as Bill Bailey’s still lifes aren’t really about bottles and bowls my work uses landscape as a tool. When I talk about this I’m often met with skepticism. One artist friend of mine told me that’s “bullshit. You just love landscape.” This might be true.

I paint on wooden boards laid on the floor. I thin the paints so they’ll dribble and flow and although I usually start with a specific landscape, I do follow the paint’s natural course. Color, pattern, rhythm and accident all step into the process. My problem is no matter how long I work on them or return to them; I never feel that the paintings are finished, probably just abandoned.

The sculptures adhere to the same process. I follow the suggestion of the wood or clay. and ask the curves in the form to follow Fibonacci sequencing. Allowing the materials and accident to lead the process of making either a painting or a sculpture, I believe, probably makes a connection with my subconscious. There’s no way to prove this but it seems an interesting possibility.