Who Am I Anyway

I began to paint in 2003.  Prior to that time, I had managed to grow up, go to college, medical school, etc. etc., have all kinds of relationships, etc. without ever once trying to create a work of art.
So I am not the usual artist who knew from early childhood.

This painting is from that first year, 2003.  I was in a taxi cab and the driver was rambling on in a paranoid way.  I caught his glance in the rear view mirror.

When I look at this painting now, my first impulse is to correct the eyes.  They obviously need more work, I say to myself.  But on the other hand, maybe the man's inner deviant psyche comes through the uneven eyes.  If I were to work on them now, I might completely obfuscate the artistic statement.  There's a kind of raw uneven power to the painting the way it now is.

Travels In Italy

Venice

    I I just got back from a two week "classical" tour of Italy, starting in the south (Sorrento, Amalfi, Pompeii), through Rome, Umbria, Tuscany, Cinque Terre, and ending up in Florence and Venice, all too briefly.  I had my sketchbook with me, and was able to find some time here and there to document what I felt and saw.

Sorrento

The artscape of Italy restores my faith in humanity and replenishes the soul. I wish everyone could get the opportunity to ride a gondola in Venice. The world would be a much better place. I, for one, am a better person for having done so.

Florence

Florence would be my favorite place on earth, were it not for Venice.

San Gimignano

Venice

Borghese Gardens, Rome

the car as American icon

As we enter day #59 or so of the gushing oil, I am in gloom over our addiction to the car. The car and the way of life it created, from accessible-only-by-freeway suburban tract housing to the smogged urban landscape, was imposed on us by Mr. Henry Ford, who squelched and destroyed the railroads and any hope for public transportation in this country.

Living in Manhattan has allowed me to give up the car. I don't put myself on a pedestal because if I lived anywhere else, I too would need a car. When I lived in California, Long Island, and elsewhere, I couldn't do the simplest errand without enriching the oil companies and polluting the air.

Now, like children fed only McDonald's, we as a society are hopelessly addicted. From our infrastructure to our culture, the car is our glue. To break free of the hold of oil on our lives will require nothing less than a completely new paradigm.

Oily Mess

Four weeks and counting. And still the oil gushes. I can't rest until that hole is plugged.

It's all of us who lose just a little bit more of the sanity we had before the Gulf became an oily sewer. We are all diminished and injured by this. We all created this by our addiction to that black goo anyway.

Lady by the Window

Erika said, Paint me a picture.

Last fall, I saw a show of Georgia O'Keefe's early abstract paintings at the Whitney Museum in New York. This spring, by coincidence, I caught the show again in Washington D.C. at the Philips Collection. It was then that I realized how great O'Keefe's early abstracts are.

Erika had actually said, Paint me a picture in the style of O'Keefe (Erika is in a Writer's Workshop in Iowa and gives assignments.) I had said, No way.

When she got this painting, she said, oh yeah, like Klimt. Yes, the face appeared first, and everything else was secondary.

This lady is now on a wall in Iowa.

Mountains in the Mist

I recently began visualizing these fantasy landscapes. Places I go to for comfort, often with combinations of mountains, oceans, and sky. It could be on earth or it could be elsewhere. Sometimes it's California, probably because I lived there for awhile.

I usually arrive there by some circuitous route. This one began as a painting of Craig.

After a few hours, it was clear that things weren't going well. I momentarily lost control, and just smushed up the paint into a messy directionless collision of the colors that were there. The skin color became a sort of mist in front of the mountains. Doesn't seem to be planet earth. The yellow in the sky is too strong for dusk, too deliberate for noon.

I put in the moutainous ledge in the foreground, just to have a place to stand.