ABOUT THE ARTIST
I was born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Elm trees lined our street - black and white geometries in winter, and mysterious depths of green in summer. I looked at all this, in love with what I saw, but afraid I could never draw or paint anything that would even partly satisfy that love. Then in college I chanced on an informal art class given by Boston painter Morton Sacks. Morton not only taught us the basics of drawing and oil painting; he also made us feel that we might be able to paint something approaching what we saw. Morton's favorite painters were “painterly,” meaning that their work took a sensual approach to the paint; for him, and for me, the visual pleasure is paramount. Encouraged when I received a first prize in painting as an undergraduate, I attended Oskar Kokoschka’s Schule des Sehens (School of Seeing or School of vision) in Salzburg, Austria. Kokoschka tried to strip us of any automatic painting “tricks” we might have come in with; he wanted us to see in a primal way, directly in color, without outlines, and without preconceptions about how to record what we saw. Thus we had wonderful models who changed position every fifteen minutes, from 9 am to 6 pm (9 to 3 on Saturdays), and we were given only a full watercolor set, paper, and a brush too big to allow fussy detail. I have had classes with several other artists, and while I learned something from each, it was Morton and Kokoschka who gave me the essentials.
Over the years, I’ve done several series of paintings; they differ in approach and medium. The watercolors vary between abstracts devoted to pure composition and color, to more representational pieces, sometimes with little dramas playing out between the props. The most recent grouping I’ve called, variously, “After Piranesi / After Us,” and “Elegiac Pieces.” These are all about my belief that our present way of life, based on endless growth of population and consumption, is not sustainable – must, in fact, end in a terrible debacle. Piranesi, the eighteenth century Italian artist of haunted architectural landscapes and ruins, has been a strong inspiration, aesthetically, technically, and in his rather dark mood. But while Piranesi’s work suggests only that great empires of the past have died, my work is about the likelihood that western civilization, and perhaps even much life on the planet, may be extinguished by our endless “progress.” Still, what our industrial civilization produces is often very beautiful – amazing – and I can’t help but admire it, sometimes even forgetting to put in the dark element. Is it too cynical to say we might as well enjoy it all while we can? Yet for the most part, I can’t quite forget where it seems to lead. My hope is that in painting this situation, and trying to make the painting such that viewers will want to look at it, I may contribute, in however small a way, to the consciousness needed to change course, environmentally and politically. Always I paint to give pleasure through the eye rather than, strictly, the intellect – though of course I aim to engage the whole human being in the process of looking.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
Children of Paradise Gallery, Berkeley
Y House, Berkeley
Giorgi Gallery, Berkeley
Torsiello Gallery, Oakland
California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco
Caldecott Properties Gallery, Oakland
JURIED GROUP EXHIBITIONS (partial list)
Timothy Higbee Gallery, San Francisco Sanchez Art Center, Pacifica
Presshouse Gallery, Napa Falkirk Cultural Center,
Giorgi Gallery, Berkeley San Rafael
John O’Lague Gallery, Hayward Eddie Rhodes Gallery,
Gualala Arts Center San Pablo
Gallery Route One, Marin Inclusions Gallery, San Francisco
600 Townsend, San Francisco Scandinavian Cultural Center,
Expressions Gallery, Berkeley Tacoma, WA
San Pablo Art Gallery, San Pablo Encyclical / Atelier Gallery, Berkeley, CA