Artist Statement

This series of acrylic paintings and mixed media drawings were created in the spring of 2019 and fall of 2020 during a sabbatical from teaching at Elmhurst University. Throughout my career, my work has been dominated by the use a of grid structure and geometric shapes. I decided to use this sabbatical to push myself away from these grid influences, which I have relied on as a rational way of solving problems. To overcome these tendencies of many years, I turned to the Surrealist’s automatic drawing technique as a way of generating random, abstract shapes -- unusual combinations of floating objects -- not based on a grid as an underlying structure. I maintained my interest in surface and pattern and the interaction between chaos and chance, searching for a symmetry between the organic shapes and the patterns that surrounded them. 

Although these paintings are different in form and content from my past work, they maintain my interest in spatial relationships between patterned and textured fields, and how they inform shapes, lines, and color. In the past, these surfaces were layers of sanded paint to create actual textures, with some surfaces painted to create visual textures and patterns. The surfaces used a variety of methods including gesture, finger painting, dripping, stamping, scraping, photography, and collage. Some of these elements have been carried to the new work, but I am no longer including photography and collage in these paintings as I have left the security of paper for the challenge of acrylic paint on unstretched canvas. On unstretched canvas, I can no longer use collage, which was important in my previous work on paper, as it would be difficult to roll up the canvas to transport it. More importantly, I can no longer use the active process of my past work, influenced by Japanese scroll paintings, of hanging individual pieces together and changing them around until they find their place in the painting. Instead, these new pieces are made of multiple shapes floating across a background with a distinct rhythmic and visual pattern.

The time I have off from teaching on sabbatical has always been an opportunity for me to break new ground and this sabbatical has proven no different. Trained originally as a sculptor, I view painting through the process of materials emerging as images; that is, as much about applying the paint and materials themselves as about a final image. In this way, my work often surprises and pushes me. There always seem new avenues to go down.