A Reconciliation

This Website is the result of a life measured in the middle. I have lived long enough to be able to look back and evaluate myself, and I look forward to my own future with a certain hope. Even so, the present moment is actually all there is. It is with this awareness that I attempt to describe myself as well as my work as an artist.

If there has been an aesthetic shift in my work, it is the result of a transition in attitude, from one of confrontation and irony to one of invitation and sincerity. What marks all of my work, however, is an ongoing effort to describe a lifetime’s sense of wonder.

For me, the practice of art is a practice of mindfulness-a practice of being in the present moment. My work is a collection of the tangible results of that practice.

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The prints I offer for sale on this Site are the result of a realization concerning the Web and its potential as a conduit of awareness by magic. In a sense I am making these images available in response to the ideas of Walter Benjamin, in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, in which he states:

Works of art are received and valued on different planes. Two polar types stand out; with one, the accent is on the cult value; with the other, on the exhibition value of the work. Artistic production begins with ceremonial objects destined to serve in a cult. One may assume that what mattered was their existence, not their being on view. The elk portrayed by the man of the Stone Age on the walls of his cave was an instrument of magic. He did expose it to his fellow men, but in the main it was meant for the spirits. Today the cult value would seem to demand that the work of art remain hidden. Certain statues of gods are accessible only to the priest in the cella; certain Madonnas remain covered nearly all year round; certain sculptures on medieval cathedrals are invisible to the spectator on ground level. With the emancipation of the various art practices from ritual go increasing opportunities for the exhibition of their products. It is easier to exhibit a portrait bust that can be sent here and there than to exhibit the statue of a divinity that has its fixed place in the interior of a temple. The same holds for the painting as against the mosaic or fresco that preceded it. And even though the public presentability of a mass originally may have been just as great as that of a symphony, the latter originated at the moment when its public presentability promised to surpass that of the mass.

In my opinion, all previous notions of the art object, including the notion of the unique, as in the case of a painting, and continuing with the notion of the multiple, as exemplified by various older printing methods, have been significantly altered by computers and the Internet. I suggest that my work be considered as an instrument of magic, not being connected with any cult or priesthood, but by the personal imagination of each individual in relationship to himself and his own sense of wonder.

The democratic, non-hierarchical nature of the Internet allows everyone equal access to my work and, in a sense, closes the loop constructed in Benjamin’s essay between the artist and his audience. My "public presentability" has surpassed that of which traditional means of exhibition are capable. This new reality changes the relationships between my work and myself and between you and me.

Why Do I Make Paintings?

Some theories about dreams consider them to be, among other things, ways for our psyches to act out conflicts or unresolved issues in our waking lives. Often, however, instead of answering the questions we might pose for ourselves, dreams ask even more questions, leaving us further puzzled. So it sometimes is with my art. It is not possible to offer anything absolute about life when I make art. I can only offer my own particular visions and hope that they resonate with other people. Actually, I would prefer to ask questions with my work than to state answers. A few years ago I had a show in Houston called Reconciliations. By that time my work had become a way for me to link opposing or conflicting elements in my life. It still is.

I am very interested in Hindu and Buddhist ideas, but I have found many Western traditions helpful as well. The source of the conflict that many of us feel might be attributed to a kind of dryness in our lives that is the result of a few centuries of scientific rationalism. I am very happy to be living now, and I appreciate the strides human beings have made in their knowledge of the universe and in their technology. But somehow in the course of achieving this understanding and apparent self-sufficiency, people have wrenched the idea of the sacred out of life. With the rise of scientific empiricism came a loss of the numinous. Sacred became synonymous with superstitious. In spite of all the problems people are having now, in spite of disease, starvation, poverty, and war, I believe our presence here is a miracle, and I believe we are capable of effectively working toward solutions to all these problems. Human beings need to make and look at art because it reminds them of that very capability, which is based upon our innate nobility. That nobility is not always necessarily conveyed by beauty, but by the terrible, the frightening, the sublime...anything that can shake us out of our complacency about our miraculous existence.