Landscape
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Landscape as a subject not just a background in painting has a long history in the Western world beginning in the early 16th century and persisting to now. Nature as subject became interesting to me growing up on eastern Long Island where woods and water were not far from my parents doorstep. I never tired of riding my bike to the Bayard Cutting Arboretum, or the Camp Eddie where I could row myself into the middle of the lake and watch the clouds float overhead. Once I had my own car I could drive out further east to Montauk Point or Orient Point and walk on the beaches or hang out at the harbor painting the sailboats or capturing still life of driftwood and dead matter. Even during my first semester at Buffalo State I made a large scale monochrome drawing of an alleyway with trash cans. The forlorn was a match for my young adult moodiness. In the process of earning my MFA at the University of South Florida in the mid-70s, I struggled with approaches to the landscape that shifted restlessly from fragmented impressions of the surrounding orange groves or fully abstracted horizontal drawings. I didn't have the history or the language to talk about this dual yearning until I was free of the influences of academia. Discovering Kandinsky's Concerning the Spiritual in Art opened up the conversation about abstraction. The paintings that followed borrowed linear structure from Kandinsky while applying color randomly but allowed inference to subject. Eventually fruther influenced by a residency with Miriam Shapiro at Blossom School of Painting at Kent State I was able to bring texture into the work as well. (See paintings from 1982
 To Beijing(2005) |
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 Shifting Ground(1992) |
 Songlines (Red)(1992) |
 Songlines Blue(1992) |
