Around the Blue Oval Painting

I have been an artist for most of my life.  First as a musician—composer, performer, and conductor - and for a number of years I have been focusing on and working in the visual arts.   For me, the need to make art has been a driving force in my life. Whether it’s working with and organizing sounds over time, or more recently colors, materials and shapes in space; my work is about turning initially vague, fleeting and amorphous ideas into solid, concrete and comprehensible works of art.  My experiences composing and creating musical structures have informed my work in the visual arts. My art reflects my responses to the visual stimulation of contemporary life and to the actual materials with which I work. Elements of both drawing and painting are combined as I work. Each piece maintains the essential fluidity of drawing (with various materials), while utilizing the mass and volume available in painting (with both traditional and non-traditional tools), to capture on canvas or paper the fleeting temporal moments of the energy of life and the art-making experience itself. Doing abstract work, I don't try to paint what I see. Rather, I try to really see what I paint, and use my initial marks on canvas or paper as the impetus to paint and/or draw more; to develop a painting, drawing, collage or assemblage until it is 'finished'. And when is a painting finished? To me, a piece is 'finished' when the addition of one more element will 'mess it up' and the subtraction of one element will leave it 'unfinished'.