statement
I have spent several decades as an artist exploring the potential of geometry to offer an optically charged mental space in which to explore universal visual language. My work is informed by diagrams of the universe, mathematical configurations, codes and symbols, maps and charts of all kinds, esoteric manuscripts, Arabic geometries, forces in nature like the ebb and flow of water, and by the work of innumerable artists. I look at the work of untrained artists, of mystics, calligraphers and craftsmen. Inspiration has come from many of the remarkable things I have seen and done, for instance climbing to the top of the pyramid of Cheops, spending the night and watching the sunrise. I truly experienced the mapping of infinity when I saw the astronomical architectural instruments of Jantar Mantar in India. Spending an afternoon at the Emma Kunz Zentrum in Wurenlos changed me.
The process of geometrically dividing the rectangle serves as a starting point for all of my work and offers a broad conceptual space for my obscure mental meanderings. Inherent in the rectangle are geometric forces that describe human experience. These forces are derived from the ways in which horizontals, verticals and diagonals intersect, height to width, corner to corner. The center pulls, triangles emerge, corners converse, grids and spirals show up seemingly out of the blue. Images emerge out of a back and forth between working both systematically and intuitively as I respond, one move to the next.
“Enantiodromia’, is defined as a principle whereby ‘the superabundance of any force inevitably produces its opposite’. This Jungian concept succinctly describes what I go through as I search for optically compelling images. I have spent decades drawing line after line, marking time, meditating, floating in repetition. I get bored. My patience gets tested.
Then there is the moment when memory, history, the intellect, my imagination, and my materials-at-hand all sync up, and an image begins to encapsulates its making. I disappear. My work of art leaves me and becomes itself.
May, 2022