Aurora Cirrostratus aka Aurora Five 2019 Painting

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, I have lived all my adult life in Los Angeles, primarily Venice and Santa Monica, where I have my art studio. As a young artist, I frequented the Art Museum and took classes at the Cleveland Institute of Art. CMA had beautiful Cezannes depicting Mt. St. Victoire, paintings that I loved. A few years ago, I spent a month in Aix en Provence, where I visited his studio and walked among the locations where he painted of the mountain and quarries. What a great painter! Much to Zola's bemusement, Cezanne painted St. Victoire for 20 years...the same subject...but always working with underlying geometric forms interacting with color. While I am no Cezanne, I, too, paint the same subjects repeatedly, always seeking to interact shapes and color to create a sense of space and energy. These subjects are inspired by extraordinary visual effects found in nature, usually while traveling: Spectacular Aurora Borealis in Iceland; Fantastic Fairy Circles on the Namibian desert. My Fairy Circles thème recalls another great artist, Sonia Delaunay, who created the first truly abstract painting in 1912. Her pioneering works continued the exploration of interacting colors with geometric shapes (with circles a predominate one). I am an abstract landscape painter using visual cues of relative contrast, overlapping shapes, complementary and derived neutral colors and other elements of perception I first learned from Ed Mieczkowski, one of the pioneers of the Op Art Movement, but I apply paint like an abstract expressionist. Painting technique is very important...I love mixing colors and applying glazes...and I'm very fussy about my brushes and paint consistency. In that sense, I am a traditional painter, not into digitized mixed media, even though I have an extensive background in computer applications. Recently, I have renewed my interest in blockchain technology, and I am fascinated by how NFT's have taken hold in the art world. I have some IP in that area, so I am thinking about venturing into spaces. Stay tuned. Another passion is protection of rhinos. I actually went to Namibia to photo rhinos, which I did, and met rhino rangers in the Huab Conservancy. I love these endangered creatures, and I am working on a series of rhino etchings that I call "Cloudwalker". Printmaking is another interest. It requires draftsmanship and technical knowledge, which I have mastered to some degree.