This series of conceptual paintings was done for a show at Archway Gallery in 2003. They cover a variety of topics, including a short series based on a trip to China in 2000.
As the title suggests, this work is about addiction, particularly
alcoholism, which has millions of people. It is inspired by my own
relationship to alcohol - and how at one point I felt that I was on
a downward spiral with alcohol pulling me into an inescapable vortex.
The inspiration for this work comes from Big Chief's description of
his father's alcoholism in One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest - how the
bottle drank from the man rather than the other way around. So I
envisioned a prisoner of the bottle in the bottle.
Original painting SOLD
Modernism is a commentary on current
trends in art and philosophy that seek to trivialize the accomplishments
of Western culture, especially art and science, as fabrications of Eurocentrism.
In this work, this philosophy is symbolized by the whitewashing of a Renaissance
artwork. A detail of the Raphael¡¦s masterpiece ¡§The School of Athens¡¨ is
chosen as a representative of the accomplishments of Western culture.
Raphael¡¦s painting depicts Plato and Aristotle, the giants of Western
philosophy, who Raphael modeled after Leonardo and Michelangelo, the giants
Western painting. A suitable choice for the enemy of Modernist thought
Accepted into the Visual Arts Alliance Show, Houston, TX, November, 2002
Original painting SOLD
This work is inspired by a journey of self discovery that began
several years ago and continues to this day. The secret is that
inside every man is a little boy that was hurt a long time ago and
is aching to be loved and healed. With these needs unmet, the child
within acts out with violence, addiction and control as the consequences.
I have shown this by superimposing the image of a sad, angry boy over
the heart of a strong man. The boy drives much of the man's behavior
(and the same could be said for women). The secret to growth is to
stay in awareness of the boy, to know what it is he wants, to heal
the old wounds. Then the authentic the man can be.
This is a piece on my fear as an artist and my constant struggle
to realize the image on the canvas. My desire to paint is very great,
but I am constantly limited by my abilities, feeling as though I am
held back. This can become greatly frustrating. I am often reminded
of Salieri’s pleading question to his confessor in Amadeus: “Why did
God give me this desire for music, like a lust in my heart, and then
make me mute?"
To capture this mood, I painted myself naked and vulnerable before
the canvas in an act of desperation - pleading with Fate to lend a
hand. Scrawled on the background, and barely visible through the paint,
are the words "Not Good Enough". This is the voice of my critic who is
always there to make a hard job even harder.
One of the things I was not prepared for, or even warned of, about
getting older is the fact that time moves faster and faster with
each passing year. Days now pass like hours, weeks like days, things
lie around the house for years...as soon as I have the time. The clock
is ticking! Time is money! Ding! your life is over!!
So I did a painting of a man struggling to keep the hands of time at
bay. Along the top is a panorama encompassing sunrise to sunset. On
the left is an hourglass and in the base is Sisyphus futilely pushing
his stone up the sands of time, doomed to fail (my favorite metaphor
from the piece). The dripping hour hand is a direct reference to Dali's
soft clocks and in the drop a skull is reflected - an ever present
reminder of our mortality. Below the figure are pyramids - symbols of
timelessness. In the lower right we can see beyond the clock to a
peaceful landscape - which is there to be enjoyed if only noticed.
For the last several years I have been working on small landscapes on
paper and have struggled to enlarge these and still maintain the
quality of the painting, particularly the color. I started this
landscape to try again to paint a larger image and I must admit that
I am pleased with the results. But when I was done, I asked myself
the toughest question any artist can ask of themselves: "Who am I
painting this for?" and I realized I had really just done this, as
with many of the smaller landscapes, for an imaged audience of buyers.
This realization brought on anger and this led me to write across this
once-sellable painting the damning epitaph: CONVENTIONAL. Like many
artists, I have struggled to balance what I want to paint against what
will sell. But accepting that I have failed as a seller has brought
great freedom and this is the primary reason this show is what it is:
a collection of un-sellable conceptual paintings that I am very proud
of.
I wonder if I should do a series of these. Perhaps they will be big
sellers...?
Original painting SOLD
As a visual artist, I have often thought of the great differences
between the visual and musical arts. When a visual artist finishes a
work, it is a complete thing in itself and the viewer sees precisely
what the artist intended. When a composer finishes a work, there is
nothing but notes on a page. The composers work is a living thing
that must be played. The work does not exist without performance.
So it is only when a composers work is performed that the music
exists. It is the responsibility of the performer to carry on the
music to succeeding generations. This is what defines our cultural
traditions.
This reminds me of a trip I once made to the Grand Shrines of Ise Shi
in Japan. There, in a forested area of the country, is a monastery
consisting of a series of wooden temples. Every twenty years, the time
of one generation, the residents of the monastery create exact
duplicates of each temple and all its artifacts. In this way,
knowledge of the construction is passed from one generation of monks
to the next. And so it has gone on for the last several hundred years.
So it seems it is with the Western tradition of music. Each generation
learns to perform the work of great composers and pass this knowledge
on. The music is a living thing carried in the hearts of those
entrusted with its treasures.
It was with this in mind that I conceived “You are Being Heard".
The work is a series of portraits of four great composers: Bach,
Beethoven, Chopin and Brahms. The title may be read two ways: It is
we speaking to them or they speaking to us. In the first reading, we
are telling these musicians that their work lives on every time we
perform. In the second reading, they are, in some sense, standing
above us - listening.
Original painting SOLD
Like many children of the Cold War, I grew up with the fear of
nuclear war which hung over my head like the eponymous Sword and
fed my childhood nightmares well into adolescence. In my suicide
days of college and beyond I often wished for the end and kept a
large poster of the Bikini atoll test. Though the immediate threat
passed, to now be replaced by the terrorist's tools, I kept the
poster, which I used as the model for this work. The pieces of the
puzzle need only be put together...
Original painting $200
This started as a simple conceptual piece when one morning I saw a
gardener mowing wild flowers in a public space. But it evolved into
a parody of conventional bluebonnet paintings. Since Lady Byrd Johnson
is responsible for planting these flowers across Texas, it can also
be interpreted on a political level, hence the chosen title. These
flowers are small penance for her to pay for the irreparable damage
her criminal husband did to this country.
Original painting SOLD
I did this painting after my first trip to Hong Kong, where I did a short visit across the border into the "People's Republic." Once across the border, I witnessed a drastic change in the environment. On that side, smiles were hard to come by and I was always aware of the presence of the military, who stood around stone-faced and staring. It was with relief that I re-crossed the bridge over the river that separates Hong Kong from China and returned. And while thinking of this trip, I conceived this painting. The central panel shows the river that is the border. One the left hand side, the People's Republic, I have placed a black, door-shaped rectangle, offset by the white rectangle on the right. For me, the difference between these two places (no longer can they be called nations), is as black and white as the two metaphorical doorways.
For me, the Great Wall symbolizes the history of China,
with its relentless succession of tyrants, more than any other
single cultural artifact. Here is a massive fortification,
stretching thousands of miles, built by the forced labor of the
Chinese peasant, whose military value was nearly worthless -
having failed to keep out the Mongol invaders, among others.
The history of the wall dates back to the formation of China as
a nation in 200 BCE. But for this particular work, I was thinking
of the expansion of the wall that took place in the seventeenth
century, when one million laborers were forced to work on its
reconstruction. The working conditions were so brutal that nearly
one half million people died. For the Chinese people, the Wall
is seen as both a symbol of the nation and a tragedy.
In this work, I have contrasted the beauty of the Wall with the
horror that went into its construction. I tore the upper Wall
piece and painted the edge blood red and laid it over an image of
skulls (I took this image, rather appropriately, from photographs
of the Cambodian killing fields). Underneath this popular tourist
attraction are the bodies of a half million innocent Chinese.
By the way, the Great Wall is NOT visible from space with the naked eye.
Accepted into the Visual Arts Alliance Show, Houston, TX, May, 2003
Original painting $250
In 232 BCE, the emperor Qin succeeded in defeating his neighboring
states, bringing the period of Warring States to an end, and creating
the nation of China with its capital at Xian. The man was a brutal
dictator and, like many despots, he wanted to have a grand funeral
and ordered the construction of thousands of clay soldiers to guard
his grave and protect him in the afterlife - no doubt he needed
protection from all the people he brutalized. Each soldier bears
the head of a real individual and so demanding was the work that if
the emperor was not satisfied, the artist was executed. Like the
Great Wall, this work symbolizes the tragedy that is the history of
China and the victimization of innocent people.
In this work, I show three clay men with their typically fierce and
fearless expressions. On the right is the real thing - a man overcome
with fear, dirtied and bloodied from the horrors of fighting a war.
Original painting SOLD
This is a portrait of my beautiful and dear wife, which I based on a
photograph I took at sunset while we cruised down the Yangtze River.
Although it may be easy to see this as a piece of Socialist Realism,
my hope is that the expression on my wife's face tells a different
story - one of pain and sadness. Not only for herself, but all Chinese
women, and, indeed, for all of China. Her own family was deeply
affected by the Cultural Revolution, having suffered imprisonment,
torture, forced abortions and confiscation of property.
Compounded with this tragedy is the fact that the very river we were on
would soon be dammed off by the Three Gorges Dam project, destroying
the homes of millions of people who were soon to be subjected to forced
displacement. As we cruised, we could see high above our heads the
markings on the cliffs indicating the targeted water level, covering
land that had been worked by farmers for thousands of years.
Original painting NOT FOR SALE
On a morning like any other I got a phone call from a friend and on
television saw icons of my New York childhood being destroyed and the
image of peace and prosperity that seemed so close at hand disappear
behind clouds of dust.
Living for several years in Brooklyn Heights, the towers were a
fixture on the cityscape that I viewed almost daily. How many times
had I been to the top to look at the vast panorama of the city? To
feel the giddiness of the height as I looked down? How many people
jumped from that height in panic on a Tuesday morning?
Shortly after this I sketched a work in acrylic paint and then did
this version in oil. It encompasses the horror and fear I felt at
the time through icons of Western art. The painting forms a narrative
from left to right as the New York landscape turns into the hills of
Afghanistan. In the smoke can be seen a pair of sinister eyes - the
eyes of the perpetrator (they are actually modeled on John Walker
Lindh). Beneath the smoke are the writhing bodies of three victims
in free fall - reminiscent of Michelangelo's The Last Judgment -
that recall the people who leaped from the top floors of the towers.
Helicopters move across the red sky bringing war which recalls
Coppola's Apocalypse Now, a film I am obsessed with. On the Hudson
River, which has now become the river Styx, is a small boat with
Charon bringing a soul to the Island of the Dead, an image from
Arnold Böcklin‘s work. On the far right is a collection of spears
which is a reference to Velasquez's "The Surrender at Breda" - an
optimistic hope for the future.
My hope with this work is to express my feelings of fear and horror,
clinging to some semblance of optimism, without recourse to trite
patriotic symbols. I truly believe that we as a species are on a
journey towards of society of peace and justice, and that this
attack was an opening salvo in another battle along this road.
Each of us has a role to play in this journey to help create this
world and I am aware of my role, small though it may be.
Original painting $500