paintings
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Birth of Antero
Oil, enamel, charcoal on canvas 82x 111 in. Last summer I spent time in Colorado with a spectacular view of Mount Antero, the highest summit of the southern Sawatch Range of the Rocky Mountains. It's named in honor of the warrior Chief Antero of the Uintah band of the Ute people. It's also known for its gemstone deposits and high concentrations of aquamarine. I began working on a large canvas outdoors overlooking Antero, thinking about the geographical history, the massive tectonic shifts and immeasurable power of nature needed to create to massive range. Relating this to the human history of this wild region I kept thinking about the warrior Antero and how he was forced to witness a different kind of massive fracturing. His was the inevitable social upheaval that took the timeless balance of hardship and paradise from his people right where I was working. The enormity of the 14,275 foot mountain in front of me was quite overwhelming throughout each day as the light shifted. More interested in the emotion of it all than the depiction or reproduction of it, I began to work the canvas while imagining the earth under me moving and forcing Antero higher into the sky. What if one could see the process that took millions of years occur in just one day? And what if you could see the countless, invisible forces of celestial gravity, earthly resistance and friction needed to create this majestic mass of earth? And then there's the thousands of years of human history with people like Chief Antero who roamed it's surface foraging for game and precious jewels endlessly supplied by the supreme commander. This is one of those paintings that are such a pleasure to paint you never want to stop.
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Essere Vivo
Oil, enamel on canvas 49x89 in. Essere Vivo is a souvenir of a journey of several months in 2016. It began with deep black Arabic script spelling Conquest on a white background, symmetrically mirrored on the left and right of the canvas. This was painted on the side of a highway in Venice, Louisiana overlooking an oil refinery. The thought was to add some kind of contrasting, colorful imagery later. Next a large, frontal view of a tank was outlined in my Memphis studio along with enhancing the script with new colors. I took the canvas with me to Colorado and worked it outdoors adding land and sky while enhancing the tank. Back again in the studio I added a masking phase with plaster that outlined very primitive lovers, a tribal ritual bringing a love element into the work, horizontally across the canvas. A new painting was made over and all around the lovers. Then the canvas was flipped upside down. Naturally it soon became impossible to read these earlier phases but they are forever embedded into the history and composition of the work. The heavy, dark concept of conquest lost out to more playful, floating colors and festive shapes that express a celebration. From the beginning the work was destined to be about optimism that will overcome everything negative. The painting evolved into a celebration of being alive, essere vivo. I'm eternally grateful for the gift of life and the opportunity to express this gratitude.
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Victory of light
Oil on canvas on board 44.5 in H x 81 in. W There’s a section of river I fished in Colorado called the Dream Stream. It became the beginning point for this painting. A peaceful, idealistic valley surrounded by high mountains with a beautiful, clear and turbulent stream running through it. Creative pursuits are planned and built with light and life. Far from this heavenly place there are forces of darkness that work against peace and light. Light is the resistance. Where these forces meet it’s extremely complex and unpredictable. So complicated that aid from above is required. Mixed into rising flames from a lower world is a fading conquest of tan and gold tadpoles, the color of desert fatigues. A reality that will vanish in a festive wave of healthy life and light where darkness will diminish. There’s a small box that holds the key to happiness and fulfillment. It is simultaneously inner and outer existence.
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Bliss Springs
Oil,graphite on Canvas 111x96 in. A place I visit on a wild and scenic river in Missouri. It’s also where joy and beauty live and flower within the reality of grit and grey. In this work there are complex triangulations, much like relationships shifting in perpetual flux and moving in and out of comprehension. And like the innumerable intersections of group karma, another unthinkable. Coexisting with the grit realm is the optimistic option always available to an unattached mind. It's my choice in each moment I'm alive. Each day I shift between them, both are real but I prefer bliss when I can get there. The linear structures are woven into a fountain of color asking the eternal question, "what's forming here?" In the search for meaning and putting it all together, this is a playground of color and form.
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Our Lady of Chicago
Oil on canvas 58 x 63 in. Many years ago I was with a friend in Chicago. After a long night all around the city we were driving back to the hotel in the pre-dawn hours. An eternally long, straight and deserted street, I think it was North Avenue, began to swallow us like some giant creature. Vast contrasts of fading music, dancing, big city coldness, festive colors and pre-dawn stillness were taking over. The visual and emotional realization of the immense quantity of good and evil coexisting and concentrated in one place was overwhelming. Back in the studio after I was off into the painting I realized the experience was like an irresistible gravitational force, the pull of a powerful, godly woman. Combining celebration and stillness is the fulfilling challenge of this work. There are so many complexities about cities I will never understand.
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Divina Ora
Oil on canvas 95 x 107 in. Domani Luminoso is a meditation, a poem and a process of prayers. On a colorful, multilayered path life has become increasingly electric, complex and fascinating. I see more and more bio-mechanical fragmenting and reassembling over time all around me. There are massive, tectonic forces shifting and working between light and dark matter. Near the center of Domani Luminoso is a collection of energy cells where a creature grows emitting positive, healing tadpoles of joy. From left to right the entire rolling path becomes a bright, colorful, multi-dimensional future. This painting began in Apalachicola, Florida. It was subsequently worked on in Colorado, New York, Memphis and Dallas, thus making it a collection of diverse experiences and visual influences over time.
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East Jesus
Oil, silicone on canvas on board 84x55 in. Years ago I remember someone asking where a person lived and the reply was, "way the hell out in east Jesus." So east Jesus stuck with me as a mysterious, far away place, more embedded southern slang. In this painting I see glimpses of a large, mysterious abstract figure coming in and out of recognition. Made from flashes of energy, he's there and not there. He's here and yet he's far away.
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Emanation 1
Oil on digital image 30x45 in. This work has many, many layers beginning with an enlarged digital detail of another painting. I was reading about the concept of emanation while reworking this image with new color. I began to imagine a slit or a seam in physical reality where light and life flow into being. In this case the emanation is becoming a new creature of light made from a collection of waves.
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The Chalice
Oil on wood 47x37 in. This piece began with a very loose, gestural impression of standing lovers done with a soft wash of mixed oil colors. It slowly evolved into disorderly vortexes of energy surrounding the figures. I decided to bring the dance into the realm of abundance using a gold chalice, reaching back to days of mass, full of latin rituals, frankincense and mysterious, colorful costumes. I added some lines of direction into the chalice indicating the willingness to receive the endless gifts and transformations from the upper waters.
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My God
Oil on Canvas 1991 94 x 64 in.
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Corner Prayer
Oil, charcoal on wood 37x47 in. There are lines making lovers who are happily floating in the spring. She is partly elsewhere lost in fluid dreams and emotional connection. His thoughts are more concrete, angular and physical. In the distance a stranger kneels in prayer, in solitary connection.
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La Presa
Oil, enamel on wood 60x60 in. This work began with a hyper-fast gestural expression of lovers with a grey wash of oils and a giant horsehair brush. I tried to leave them in their original state as much as possible as I moved it into adding new layers of being into the story, painting around the figures with rich red and blue enamel for earth and sky. Using a reference of a pre-Colombian, gold breastplate I saw in Bogota several years ago I masked off an outline of the design. This created a loose derivative of the design in what would become the negative reveal. What I wanted was to make the connection between earth and sky, man and woman and the physical world with the upper waters of the divine. La Presa means the socket, a circuit complete when we are plugged in.
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Shefa
Oil, enamel on wood 60x60 in. The abundance piece of the Essere Vivo show, is best illustrated by this painting. It has a seam in the middle that's the source of emanation from a higher level of existence. The word Shefa is beautifully explained by classical Kabbalist Rabbi Steven Fisdel. "The concept of Shefa is a particularly important one in Kabbalist teaching; one that is central in understanding how the universe in general and humanity in particular are sustained. The principle implies the concept that like flows to like. God creates the world as the supreme manifestation of good and then sustains it constantly with the flow of goodness. Though the word, Shefa, literally means abundance, in Kabbalist terms it implies considerably more than that. Shefa is actually, on the broadest level, the flow of goodness that comes to our world from the higher planes of existence. This means that first and foremost, the Shefa is a specific form of light that is sent down on one hand and drawn down on the other. It is the light of intended good and specific benefit. This light is meant to add new vitality to the world and to enrich the experience of all who dwell on earth. In human terms, Shefa comes as blessing and has many forms. It can provide enlightenment, transformation and wisdom on the spiritual plane, evolution, growth and empowerment on the psycho-emotional level and resources, wealth and opportunity in the material world.
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Zozan Cudi
Oil, latex, enamel on Canvas 109 in. H x 65 in. W The central figure Zozan, is a Peshmerga warrior. With an actual face and a masked face she wields a mighty and just sword. Emerging from the black and white of good and evil that is next to her, she slays the last jihadist under her feet. Above him is the distant cave of the past with fragments of a more colorful present appearing. And above Zozan is a positive, golden future spinning into reality.
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Domani Luminoso
Oil on canvas 75 in. H x 114 in. W Domani Luminoso is a meditation, a poem and a process of prayers. On a colorful, multilayered path life has become increasingly electric, complex and fascinating. I see more and more bio-mechanical fragmenting and reassembling over time all around me. There are massive, tectonic forces shifting and working between light and dark matter. Near the center of Domani Luminoso is a collection of energy cells where a creature grows emitting positive, healing tadpoles of joy. From left to right the entire rolling path becomes a bright, colorful, multi-dimensional future. This painting began in Apalachicola, Florida. It was subsequently worked on in Colorado, New York, Memphis and Dallas, thus making it a collection of diverse experiences and visual influences over time.
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Love is light
Oil and acrylic on canvas 78 x 42 in. Energy particles float and gravitate to each other in seemingly random patterns. I'm not convinced it's all random. These particles of light are the resistance to darkness. Like lovers coming together, a spark of life is created when the light of love overcomes darkness. Hearts are charged with blissful life, like wonderful and mysterious creatures floating in remote depths of the sea.
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Emuna
Oil, enamel, resin, wax, fabric, pigment on wood 48 x 48in. Emuna is the firm belief in a single, supreme, omniscient, benevolent, spiritual, supernatural and all-powerful Creator of the universe. To me the entire cosmic soup that is constantly rearranging itself is Emuna. It's all God at work becoming, undoing and re-becoming. Formless souls inbetween incarnations float through space in search of their next host form. In this painting a man-animal soul appears with a third eye chakra. This is the 6th chakra and is responsible to what we refer to as "the sixth sense" that connects us to our internal intuitions and is responsible for the sharp senses, the ability to read the future and receive non-verbal messages. Through the Third Eye we communicate with the world and can even receive messages from the past and from the future. It grants us our sense of observation.
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Lovers with craft
Oil, earth, acetylene on canvas 16 in. H x 20 in. W A story of questions. There are lovers in a highly charged, cosmic landscape standing next to an impression of a space craft. Are they boarding, disembarking or merely curious? This is a thought about the quest for understanding what is real, what is imagined and what may never be known. And it's about being on the journey with a partner.
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Magneto
Oil, latex, acetylene on wood 60 x 60 in. "A small electric generator containing a permanent magnet and used to provide high-voltage pulses." My father was an electrician and I grew up surrounded with electrical gadgets that were very mysterious and fascinating. This often surfaces in my work as I think about the visible and invisible energy pulsing throughout our universe. Magneto began as a two dimensional expression of a bronze sculpture titled "Fuerzas, (Forces), Spring. These two works relate to the strong forces unleashed by the ever changing explosion of life beginning with the Big Bang.
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Extreme Unction
Oil, silicone on Canvas 103 x 86 in.
