Often I find myself lost in the application of the paint- the mixing and overlapping, and how fascinating it is. I forget all about my subject matter and what my ideas for the theme are. I get wrapped up in the fluid color and the ultimate complexity of the color variations and textures of the paint. I like putting the paint on thick, with a palette knife, then moving that volume of paint with a very expressive brush. That’s where the mixings and all the variations that I really appreciate occur. And the texture! Yes, texture especially, texture in color, texture in value and in change, Texture in all the expressions of different surfaces. All these intricacies of painting fascinate me. People think of painting as being flat. I say give it volume, give it variation.
I paint because I want to. I hate to be under pressure from any source to have to paint a certain subject or to produce enough paintings for a show. For me, that pressure eliminates the painting spirit, the visceral will to want to paint. There is a special delicate essence of that will which, when forced, vanishes. To be forced to paint by monetary pressure is the surest way to condemn my will to a most distant and inaccessible place, lured out again only by most profound inspiration.
One of the elements that I attempt to reach in my paintings is the realm just beyond the real. The dimension – a different wavelength – slightly out of phase with “normal” reality.
There’s an overwhelming presence that is always with the people that are in touch with the land, its natural inhabitants, and each other in community. They know the human will and the spirit far better than those who are entrenched in contemporary society. To try to catch in paint that simplicity and complexity, and express it in a way that touches people who never get a chance to experience or appreciate it, is part of my goal – to introduce them to a feeling completely unknown to them.
