ARTIST STATEMENT JANUARY 2022
I am a realist painter. I want to record the world around me as I see it. Owing to my first profession, Law Librarian, I am a documentarian because I know the value of accurate, objective documentation of a moment in time.
Reality itself is enough: interesting, engaging, ironic, and zany enough, that all I have to do is paint it as-is without device or gimmick to convey the meaning that I take and the beauty that I find.
Why make art? I have always done it. My artistic eye compels me. It speaks to me quietly but insistently. From a small child I drew and painted and made collages from magazines and art papers. Also, I feel called to document life in the late 20th & early 21st century for the sake of those that come after us. I want to show the viewer how I see the world in these times of rapid change.
While I play with oil pastel, collage and pencil sketch, my real work is painting realistically in oils. Oakland and her people are a favorite subject.
In painting I usually work from my own photographs, as in The Jack London Oak. Sometimes images that I come across inspire me, as in Cowbell for Christopher Walken where his pose in the blue coat, taken from a magazine I found in the hair salon, moved me to respond to the Saturday Night Live “More Cowbell” sketch with the Blue Oyster Cult from 2000. In The Neil Parrish I took his own snapshot of himself, his wife and their babe in arms posed in front of his vintage green Cadillac ambulance, and imposed it over a background image which I’d previously photographed in Oakland’s Mt. View Cemetery.
In my master notebook I keep detailed notes during the painting and creation process. I record the hue of each paint used on each major piece of the composition. I write down dates for everything. I nearly always do at least one sketch before painting, and usually sketch on the canvas before painting begins. I control my medium carefully and use petroleum gel medium as a solvent.
I have periods of high productivity followed by extended fallow time.
