Still life with carafe Sculpture

I'm a firm believer in active vision. That is, individuals play a critical role in determining the meanings and values of the objects and relationships in their lives. Though we do not determine the size of a mountain, the flight of a bird, or the smile on a face, we do have a say in what each say & mean to us. Vision requires form and content. As a professional woodworker, I work to extend the use of wood into new forms. Wood is part of nature and not an imitation of it. My "paintings" are made from hard & soft woods and finished in natural oils. Every piece of wood for my art is carefully selected for its unique qualities of color and grain before being hand sawn to size and shape. As important, most of the individual pieces of wood in a work are not flat and of uniform thickness. The surface height of the work varies and creates a rich, 3-dimensional experience similar to bas relief in sculpture. In the end, each individual piece of wood plays it's part in forming a coherent whole - when combined by a viewer's eyes. I selected a work by Picasso to illustrate these beliefs since Cubism inspired many of my thoughts on art. I've always appreciated that the Cubists never dropped content & subject matter from their pieces, avoiding ending up in what has happened at times in meaningless abstraction - form without content. Thank you for your interest in my work. Please feel free to contact me with any questions or comments.