Art Productions New York

What are the core and fundamental themes and concepts of your art?

Visual Art allows me to make sense of my reactions to events. My work speaks directly to the role of emotions upon what is perceived as reality. I think that is what we do as human beings, look at what is outwardly apparent and expose it to subjectivity. I prefer to use an expressionist approach as I find it relays my feelings and musings most clearly to myself and to others. My subject matter is often nature as I find within it a consuming fascination and awe. However, I also paint figuratively and perhaps pointedly toward human existence. As a species we have our own nature, which has a beauty of it’s own but it is clearly in conflict with the earth. The subject of this conflict is incredibly relevant to these times. I guess, like everyone else, I’m searching for an answer.  In all of my work I find the use of light to be a central concern as it animates and brings drama to my compositions, which I perceive as captured scenes or time frames. I often use extremes of saturated color as I wish to connect to the viewer with an immediate, sensual lure to absorb them into my conversation about our earthly existence before they move on to something else.

How closely do these ideas relate to your creative process and the actual act of creating the art itself?

Very closely, because for me a work of art begins with an unpasteurized reaction to something I witnessed – an incident, a setting or an event I experienced, a personal interaction or an unusual or unexpected encounter. The actual process of making my art is a personal journey where I come to terms with strong reactions to the world that surrounds me and commands my attention. The finished piece reflects my resolution and closing response. I also sketch incessantly; so copious notes often predetermine the groundwork of my expression, even though the process takes on a life of it’s own.

I must say that beyond all the profundity, the actual act of creating art plays a significant role in my practice. I have a passion for art itself so I don’t need to be chased into my studio by a particular psychological quandary or ensnared by a muse, I am happy to begin without any particular inspiration by playing with color, tangling with design strategies or challenging myself with exigent art principles or unusual elements the other intentions can easily spring forth from that.

Which artists/designers/creators (past or present) are you inspired and influenced by?

I do have some all time favorites; The Lascaux Cave Painters; all ancient indigenous art knockouts me out. Käthe Kollwitz, Emily Carr, Diane Arbus, Dorthea Lange, David Hockney, Leonard Baskin, Frida Kahlo, Fritz Scholder, Annie Leibowitz, David Blackwood, and Yoshitako Amano. I grew up in Canada so I spent countless hours absorbing the works of the Group of Seven; their influence seems almost to enter the world of nurture and environment. I love the Post Impressionist and Fauvists. I am very drawn to and haunted by early Soviet Film Posters and imagery from early cinema. In particular, Ingmar Bergman’s, Seventh Seal, Antonin Artaud’s, Joan of Arc, François Truffaut’s, 400 Blows, Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-UP, Bo Widerberg’s Elvira Madigan. I am a huge fan of installation art from the works of Joseph Beuys to those of Yayoi Kusama.

Which of your work/works stands out as a highlight, a favorite, or a significant point in your creative growth and development? and why?

There are a few works that I consider to be meridians and of special value to my artistic history. My current body of work springs from a painting I titled “Hoping For Rain.” Prior to it, during my first couple of years in the northwest, I excitedly took to expressing its idyllic disposition. I was nearly giddy with it all; the slanted light, the confusion of scale and expanse and the distinct seasons. However, the summer of 2014 brought an onslaught of horrific Wild Fires. The surrounding nature was obscured, darkened and the sky was filled with smoldering ash. The question as to how I might faithfully render the effect was sharp in my consciousness. For me, ignoring the moment was not the answer. Representing nature as over taken or defeated was likewise out of the question.

As the summer burned on the severity of the fires were merciless, firefighters could not bring the blazes to yield, and in the attempt, were losing their lives. It was the first time I heard the phrase “super storm” and the discussion of how Global Warming was no longer just a threat but has begun to over take us. The community reveres nature and depends on its summer season economically. We all felt as though we were perched on a knife’s edge. I saw a satellite image of the smoke trailing over Iceland. That infuriated me. The sight of our national carelessness sweeping over another distant land was too much.

At the end of August, with a heart and mind full of paradox, mourning the loss of the beautiful summer lake and the crystal clear and always immense sky that embraces its’ deep fertile waters which now reflected only shallow grays, I closed my studio door and went to work on a sizeable canvas I had prepared. I brought out my largest brushes, and armed with a variety of holstered palette knives I merged the usually distinct colors of summer with each other to create unlikely hues and blurs of value which I slammed, poured, threw and jabbed at the panels’ surface. I kept at it until I saw what I felt and could later emphasize with more careful work. It was a breakthrough.

As an artist of a powerful creative voice and message, what do you wish to communicate to your audience?

With my art I wish to communicate the excruciating beauty of nature as it stands against the tortured environment we have created and the archetypal qualities of the human condition, which I feel fuels our disregard for it and ourselves. I would like to think my work might lead to a real and immediate conversation about our environments’ and societies demise at our own hands. It’s remarkable to me how comparatively few people in our culture get it. People see what they want to see and in doing so often choose allegorical blindness. That is a significant character of who we are, and of course, part of the problem.

Creatively, professionally and in all aspects of being an artist, what are your goals for your upcoming works and art.

I wish to cross unknown borders, reach out to and collaborate with other artists and art enthusiasts. I plan to continue to reflect these convictions in my art, to take on mixed an unfamiliar media and methods; whatever is needed to speak my truth. I strive to point out to my audience that what is experienced visually is powerful. It is transcendent in its ability to be all-inclusive and to communicate our circumstances. Just like science, music, philosophy, performance and literature, visual art is part of a long conversation about the human condition. This point of view drives me to create immediately compelling imagery. “Pretty windows” are not the definition of art. If it’s hanging on your wall and it doesn’t stop you to rethink things, to dream or to inspire new ideas, if it essentially has been created to match some curtains then it isn’t art. I’d like to somehow get away from preaching to the choir and entice individuals toward their susceptibility to the visual. Even if they don’t understand its historic value I hope to engage them in its current value. I guess the ultimate underlying message I am always driving at is that Art can serve you but it’s more meaningful if it creates you.