Urban Sprawl Print

How does a retired architect with Grapheme-Color Synesthesia experience the world? Structured chaos and a color palette that evolves without conscious direction. In a way my architectural background and Synesthesia have given me both roots and wings. Currently, My subject matter contains two main bodies of work, couples and buildings. I find people very interesting and the most interesting aspect is the dynamics and interaction of two people, so I find myself depicting couples as a broad subject matter. My couples work is really about epic fantasy: the layering and depth of emotion and tension. Supply me with true and complex dramas for painting and I make it untrue and then add an accent of truth. My paintings of buildings are inspired by architecture and the built environment. As a former Architect, I think about buildings all the time and usually include a partial plan placed in the painting. I define my style as, “Color Field Abstract Realism”. My work is organized in blocks of color that are defined by edges or a change of light/dark values. I have a basic pallet of 33 colors but I allow myself to add to that as desired. I really am not sure how/if my synesthesia is a factor in my color selection. It remains a mystery. What is real is often what is remembered to be or the essence of the painting, not the painting itself. So, I use “Abstract Realism” in my descriptive label, but it’s not the realism in a photographic sense. The three historical artists who have had the most influence on my style and my development as an artist are Stuart Davis, Jean Metzinger and Wassily Kandinsky. Davis was an early American modernist who was doing Pop Art style Cubism back in the 1920’s. He is not well known but his work was ahead of his time. I love cubism. I love it because, in its infancy, the Picassos, the Barque's and the Gris’s met with incredible resistance. They were criticized, attacked and laughed at by critics, galleries, curators and other artists. This didn’t stop them. They persevered because they were creating from their hearts and minds. My favorite cubist is Jean Metzinger. Kandinsky was a Russian painter and is generally credited as one of the pioneers of abstraction. He worked with geometric forms, lines and colors. Before becoming an artist, he was a successful lawyer and teacher. And if that was not enough, according to contemporaries, he was a most agreeable human being - charismatic, kind, and well-liked.