ARTIST'S STATEMENT:
Picasso once stated that he did
not trust pure abstraction to
shoulder the burden of meaning.
I don't necessarily agree, yet,
even when my paintings ebb
towards pure abstraction,
elements such as the hull of
cargo ships, the water,
the sky, buildings, containers,
bridges, or scaffolding are never
wholly sacrificed; abstracted,
but still very intelligible. Robert
Motherwell said that he "painted by correction". Although this could be said of any artist that sees drawing and painting as a searching process, it doesn't necessarily imply a process of refinement concerned with an accurate and objective transcription of nature. I start with nature (a cityscape, a port, or even the memory of a place that I have visited) and then adjust or sometimes almost destroy that objective image in order to resurrect an essentially abstract vocabulary of line, color, and shape capable of carrying the more subjective feelings that I attach to a place or a memory.
When painting, I find that I cannot accept a movement in the composition that does not contain a certain raw or edgy quality about it. It is this that gives the work a furtive or shifty quality that keeps me engaged. This working and re-working process gives the paintings an inner life, their own independent histories.
