Radical Synthesis

Radical Synthesis (2016) 24 x 24″ acrylic on wood panel

There’s a collaborative quality to the schizophrenia of creativity, and the synthesis of elements, political, visual, social or whatever stripe, as powerful as the fundamental experience of attachment and loss is the experience of synthesis, bringing together disparate forces into some kind of new and innovative arrangement that satisfies and imperative.

In this case, I feel an expression of the flow of social and political commentary, local and national, an immersion in journalism and advocacy, yet within the collaborative community there is still an electrifying intensity and tension, this piece conveys some of those implications while also achieving synthesis, however fleeting, momentarily getting us immersed in the flow.

Seismic Splashdown

Seismic Splashdown (2016) 20 x 16″ acrylic on wood panel

Another involved architectural painting with compositional focus way off center, some labyrinthine constructivist central elements floating above an intricate, organic underpainting

I feel there is a strong dualistic poetry there, and the intersubjective transference characteristic of our current times and emergence into spring, chaotic world news, urban dynamics, so many powerful social forces of upheaval

Perhaps being immersed in journalism also plays a role, as Arts & Culture Editor for What Weekly, I’ve been meeting a dozen or more new artists and writers each month since last October, assigning, writing and photographing new developments in Baltimore theatre, literature, architecture, visual art and other areas, so coming off of a hiatus from painting after the Aquasphere series, I have a lot to express through these new paintings.

 

Rebel Music

Rebel Music (2016) 18 x 18″ acrylic on wood panel

 

In this process I’ve been working on 21 paintings over the past two months, I narrowed it down and set ten of them aside to focus on completing new pieces for an upcoming exhibition here at
Motor House

This piece is typical of this series in that it consists of about seven or eight layers of paint on wood panel, I’ve worked in square format geometric abstractions for 18 years so I always enjoy pushing the boundaries in terms of color, composition and contrast as well as subtle painterly surface texture

Compositionally this piece kind of throws down the gauntlet, pushing the eye down to the lower right corner even as there are a few points of escape to keep our point of view circulating into the “background” and revolving through echoes and passages of dark shadows, a powerful tension of attachment and loss.

 

Drift

I’m fascinated with the compositional appearance of fish in the water, the way they dart suddenly into an environment, hover weightless, drift and disappear, their motion is unique in nature, their experience of the world so dramatic in the context of evolution that we land-based creatures evolve from and cannot escape.