Chapter 7 - Fat Cat Painting

I was born in Chicago, IL USA in 1948, went to college in Illinois and Maryland and settled in Philadelphia, PA in 1973 and stayed. For 35 years I'd go back and forth between working at construction and working in my studio. At age 57 I decided to spend the rest of my time in the studio. The two constants in my work have been the narrative and the intensity of the visual. I want the viewer to be intoxicated and perplexed by how I make my paintings and intrigued by the stories I'm trying to tell. I'm interested in human dynamics whether they be social, political, or emotional. - In the end though it's about randomness and our inability to control that randomness. Things happen - anything can happen and we want somehow to control it, but we can't. Art is a good attempt at trying. - Fashion is ephemeral, so I never concern myself with what is fashionable, which in the end puts me in and out of fashion depending in what decade my work is being considered. I’ve been doing some version of the same thing for 50 years. - At the elemental level of life itself, if you stop and think, everything is essentially something we do to keep ourselves busy between birth and death. The in between is the variable from one person to the next. Are you decent, are you compassionate, do you seek truth and a clear understanding of reality? Those are the questions I ponder to justify my life and what I do with my time.