ARTIST STATEMENTS: General, Painting, Sculpture, Furniture

WHAT IS GREAT ART?

THE MASTERS SPEAK

 

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GENERAL STATEMENT

Great art is more internal than external: it creates and occupies its own universe, pulls the viewer into a field of self-generated energy, and explains itself in the interplay of Color (Energy) and Line (Structure).

For me, the importance of staying free, flexible, and open-minded to all influences cannot be overstated. But boundaries can’t be abandoned. My own boundary is Pop Art – commercial, substanceless, sensationalist, all surface no center, clichéd, manipulative, disposable, recyclable. In short, Anti-Art.

So, in identifying the aesthetic that defines my work, to put it negatively I’m Anti-Pop. To put it positively and simply, I try to create never-seen-before works of imagination that revitalize perception by returning to the “objective” world what our intellect steals from it -- magic. In other words, at the risk of sounding old-fashioned, Beauty.

 

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PAINTING

Over the years I’ve moved from Figurative to Abstract. Early on, influenced by Van Gogh, Kokoschka. Rouault, Sautine, and others, I concentrated on expressionist portraits – bold stroke, heavy impasto, fauvist colors.

My figures became increasing deconstructed and fragmented until the canvases were Abstract Expressionist color fields.

When I first saw the works of the New York AE pioneers – de Kooning, Pollack, Rothko – I thought, like many: “What the hell is this? A kid could do that!” Not really, as I found out.

After study and practice, I realized the great challenge of abstract painting: it’s like a line/color game of chess creating an order from visual chaos – every brushstroke a decision. The canvas fails when chaos prevails, and succeeds when order is created. More than that, a great abstract canvas may show you something familiar in a way that you’ve never seen before. A yellow or blue such as you’ve never seen, a simple circle or square like you’ve never seen.

To meet the challenges of abstract painting, I’ve experimented with many different techniques. My breakthrough came while experimenting with enamels, resins and solvents on melamine board, vinyl floor tile, sheet metals, glass. I found that pigment “cocktails” (both spirit and water-based), when applied in wet-on-wet layers will blossom within one another when solvents are applied. Kaleidoscopic, fractal effects result that resemble both microscopic images (viruses, bacteria) and macroscopic (stars, planets, constellations).

With unorthodox paint mixtures and applications, I try to achieve the brilliant richness and depth of glasswork, cloisonné, and high-fire ceramics. Every work is unpredictable and one-of-a-kind due to the many variables involved: ground, glazes, means and timing of applications, heat, humidity, curing procedure. My larger compositions are puzzle-like assemblies of these “color tiles” with other luminous materials: acrylite, exotic hardwoods, brushed aluminum and stainless steel.

With this self-discovered and refined technique, I try to create never-before-seen works of imagination. Work that is not merely novel, but – technically and conceptually -- truly individual, new, and powerful.

 

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SCULPTURE

My sculpture is inspired by the magic of African primitives, the minimalism of Modigliani and Giocommeti, the sensual monoliths of Henry Moore.

My first sculptures were of wood. I’ve always loved wood, especially wild highly figured hardwood.

To complement and accentuate rich grains and textures of stumps, burls, crotches, I began to introduce other materials – stainless steel, brush aluminum, marble & granite, acrylic. These hybrid assemblies became increasingly abstract and unique. Finally, I began experiment with another natural material seldom used by other artists: Bone.

The perfect marriage of form and function, bone is the ultimate sculptural material with its sensuous planes, its variegated textures and colors – pebbly to jagged to smooth, umber to blonde to ivory white.

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FURNITURE

 

My furniture design is a marriage of classical and contemporary. Many pieces combine exotic hardwoods with steel, stone, and/or acrylic. I try to orchestrate the dramatic hues and grain patterns of highly figured tropical woods such as cocobolo, bloodwood, zebrawood, purpleheart, and others.

My woodwork is sculptural and minimalist. I avoid unnecessary detail or decoration. Less is more. I work mostly with hand tools. No jigs, templates, schematic drawings are involved. Each piece is one-of-a-kind. Trial and experiment are involved in every creation.

My inspirations are eclectic – from the Shakers, to Bauhaus, Mackintosh, Eames, and contemporary Italian. But above all, I strive for the unique, elegant, and timeless.

 

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WHAT IS GREAT ART?

Every artist tries to produce quality work according to his or her personal standards of what great art is.

Inspired by the masters -- Bosch, Breugel, El Greco, Grunewald, Rembrandt. Corot, Van Gogh, Utrillo, Modigliani, Munch, Nolde, Corinth, Kokoschka. Rouault, Sautine, Vlaminck, Ensor, Picasso, Klee, Kline, de Kooning, Rothko, Dubuffet -- these are my standards of great art:

• Great art has the power and inevitability of a force of nature. It is never merely a pop manipulation of materials for a novel or whimsical effect.
• Great art reveals a vision; mediocre art showcases a technique.

• Great art has no subject matter outside itself. It creates and occupies its own universe, and contains all the tools necessary for its own understanding because the work itself is its own comment and its own explanation.

• Great art states nothing, implies everything.

• Great art is an equation of form: it poses a problem of line and color, and shows the process of solution or unsolveability.

• Great art is an order of disorder, a method to madness. It catches the animal, but frees it at the same time.

• Superseding aesthetic schools, vogue and propaganda, great art is a unique synthesis of the four ways of seeing: impressionist, expressionist, surrealist, and abstract.

• Great art enriches the observer's sense & sensibility. Putting a pedestal under a soup can, or Jesus in a jar of urine, does not fulfill the mandate.
• Great art is ambitious – always up & out on a limb, taking chances. Bad art -- glib, facile, without edge -- never ventures beyond the narrow circumference of its technique.

 

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THE MASTERS SPEAK

 GAUGUIN

-Color, which is vibration, just as music, is able to attain what is most general and yet most vague in nature: its interior force.

-The artist must take nature's elements and create a new element.

 

CEZANNE

-Never the brain's logic: but the logic of the eyes. If the artist feels correctly, he will think correctly.

 

MATISSE

-Being an artist is a matter of learning, and perhaps relearning, the language of writing by lines. Artistic creation acquires quality only when it comes up against difficulties.

-Color helps to explain light. I do not refer to the physical phenomenon of light but, rather, the only kind of light that truly exists, that of the mind of the artist.

 

JEAN DUBUFFET

-Painting is a much more spontaneous and direct language than spoken words. It is nearer to a cry or a dance.

 

GEORGE BRAQUE

-The picture is complete when the idea is obliterated.

 -The artist who no longer encounters any resistance approaches perfection. But only a technical perfection.

 

ASGER JORN

 -It is a question of penetrating the entire cosmic system of laws that govern the rhythms, the energies, and the substance that make up the world's reality, from the ugliest to the most beautiful -- everything that cries out to us: this is life itself.