Mistaken Identities Revisited Painting

Born: 1953, Chicago, IL, USAI grew up in Birmingham, AL making regular summer retreats to the mountains of Western North Carolina with my family. After earning an MFA degree from East Carolina University, I began teaching art at the college level in 1981. My first full time teaching position was in 1982 at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California. In 1985 I moved to Roswell, New Mexico for a year as a fellow with the Roswell Artist-in-Residence Program. In 1986, I was an artist-in-residence with the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming, before moving to Honolulu, Hawaii where I taught as a visiting assistant professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. In 1987, I returned to the mountains of Western North Carolina where I have taught at the University of North Carolina, Asheville for over 21 years. I am currently Professor of Painting and Director of the S. Tucker Cooke Gallery at UNC Asheville.My paintings combine abstract brush marks with trompe l'oeil illusionism. The juxtaposition of these opposite ways of working results in a dialectic approach to painting. The visual tension that exists in the work reflects the dualistic and paradoxical nature of the world as I see it. The paintings can be seen as simultaneously abstract and hyperrealistic, active yet calm, or both contemplative and humorous.Reconciling different technical approaches to painting allows each method to contribute to the overall mood and feeling of a work. Through the use of illusion, the paintings convey both a sense of mystery and humor, and reflect my longtime interests in Surrealism, as well as the psychology of perception. In recent years, I have been working on a series of "cutout" paintings in which the illusion of the object is intensified. This is achieved by allowing the trompe l'oeil painting of objects to extend beyond the perimeter of the painting's perceived boundary. Using large, single sheets of birch plywood as the support, the panels are carefully cut and shaped to create this added effect. Such construction allows the illusion of the objects to move beyond merely projecting toward the viewer, to extending outside the periphery of the paintings, including casting shadows on the wall. When properly lighted, the actual shadows falling on the wall match up with the painted shadows to enhance the illusion.