Evolution of a Vision

My work over the past 25 years has gone through many evolutions and explorations -- a continual quest for what I call "The Absolute." It has been a search for a purity of abstraction and visual truth that articulates my deepest thoughts about beauty and aesthetics. For more than 15 years, my imagery derived from biomorphic abstraction, using organic forms in my work that related to emotional and spiritual connections I had to Nature and the human condition.

Over the last few years, the imagery in my work has been shifting in many ways, as I felt I had said all I could with biomorphic abstraction and I was ready to move on to something new. There was a clarity that was missing from my process and theories. I felt "The Absolute" was once again eluding me and I began an ardent quest to capture it for myself once again. I went to the Sahara Desert in early 2006, camping for a week in that great expanse, and when I returned I felt as though the experience had swept my former imagery out of me, totally and completely. I began to work exclusively with geometry and with a focus on light -- this seemed to me the most natural equivalent to the desert landscape that had stripped me clean of all former perceptions. Geometry, simple straight lines organized into rectangles and squares, gave me the opportunity to focus on light and color and its relation to form and atmosphere. That desert was all about the light -- the light reflecting on pristine dunes, the glorious starlight, the relentless wash of the sun on the landscape.

Working in a geometric format for a couple of years has helped me flesh out where my true interests lie. In my latest work, the Ambient Light Series, I feel I am finally approaching my own "Absolute" aesthetic. I am moving more toward "formlessness," a visual language that relies solely on color, texture, and light. Through this series, I have developed a process that allows the painting to come into its own in a slow and methodical way. I believe the repetitive technique I've been using creates the perfect conditions for "The Absolute" to evolve. I will write more of this process in a later post.