“This Rich and Precious Earth” 46” x 46” (framed), mixed media/panel
I’m very grateful to Joshua Adamo, owner/director of Paragon Fine Arts Gallery in Lewisburg, WV for his support. About a year ago, Josh gave me the opportunity to share my paintings at his beautiful space. It’s fulfilling to share my art in public. A wonderful bonus is that he’s secured several sales, most recently, these two paintings.
It’s restorative for me to create things. I like to use the process of painting to wordlessly reveal feelings and sort things out I may not be able to articulate. For 45 years it’s been a way to better understand and center myself. Making art balances my intuition and rationality.
The psychiatrist and neuroscientist Dr. Iain McGilchrist speaks about the unhealthy and unsustainable dominance of our left hemisphere-oriented society. They’re deeply interwoven, each plays a crucial role in affecting our lives, and to a degree they overlap guiding our behavior. The key difference is in the lenses they offer to interpret life, and perspectives they generate, which then reflect how we experience the world.
Both have been essential to our survival. The left leans toward labels and control; it’s very good at narrow focus, discerning discreet parts, categorizing. It’s view is incremental, mechanistic, linear. He postulates it evolved to aid us in “acquiring things” — like food, materials for warmth, or plants to heal.
Our right hemisphere offers a broad overview, less the parts and more the whole. It’s fluid, recognizes patterns, and senses emotions and the energy of relationships. It “reads the room” and takes in the ambiance of situations or places.
Given how I approach painting, I don’t like to claim full credit for what emerges. I try (in the “Zen” sense — that is, without applying effort) to be open to what unfolds. I aim to be a “rider” as much as the “driver” and don’t know the destination beforehand. A degree of logic and intellectual consideration inevitably comes in, but in the successful, most vital works its role is lessened.
I’m guided by an intuitive sense, responding to the materials with minimal conscious thought, allowing things to flow. My loose aim is to “take a painting to its point of maximum ripeness,” as Picasso said, and to do so in a harmonious way. Through painting I’m trying to retool my awareness by offering room to “listen” to my right hemisphere.
Modern industrialized society is driven mostly by the left hemisphere. We’ve blissfully and ignorantly ignored the larger view of the interrelationships of which humans are a part. We’ve clearly pushed the balance of the Earth’s ecological systems to a brink.
The earth will go on, but we’ve initiated a collapse of the ecosystem balances established over millions of years. We’re radically altering the world we’ve always known. The earth will adjust, restructuring of these systems will happen, but not in our human lifetimes.
Essentially, the foolish notion we’re separate from “nature” and each other has put us in a broken relationship with life on this planet. The grand irony is we may not be part of the life that survives.
It’s hard to hold disparate points of view without having a compromise at hand. I live within this materialist culture, make use of its unsustainable conveniences, and the paintings I make are also objects for sale in an extractive consumer society. And I study and can sense the tragedy unfolding because of our domineering beliefs, societal ways, and disconnected relationship to the earth. I’m trying to live the questions toward my own harmonious resolution.
I doubt there’s a simple rational “answer.” I’m deeply affected by my relationships, with people, animals, and all life forms with which I engage. Painting is a way for me to gently probe all this indirectly, without necessarily following a logical linear path.
At times it offers me a way to “ask” unformed questions. Looking at the paintings upon completion, I like to allow a title to come forward in response to what they reveal or suggest in that moment of my life.
“This Rich and Precious Earth” felt like it was at once addressing the deep beauty of our wondrous world, the terrible storms we’ve unleashed, and the current losses and pending changes on the horizon. The ongoing drama of Death begetting Life.
“Her Warm Embrace Parted the Clouds of My Winter” was completed not long after the ending of a brief and sweet friendship. Its closure was the result of an unexpected rupture. It too, was a death of sorts.
But in the months after, I came to recognize how that short yet potent relationship had nudged me beyond a previously safe, falsely stoic mindset that I’d adopted for security. It reawakened me to a more vulnerable, more fully engaged life.
Change is challenging for most of us. Yet mystery, openness and spontaneity (all of which our culture abhors) are also what gives life richness and vitality.
I’m always honored when others find resonance in things to which I’ve applied my energies. Purchasing a work takes that one notch further. For me, in a way it reveals and validates our unseen, unspoken, undocumented connections. Especially in these frazzled times, seems we all could use more trustworthy connections.
“Her Warm Embrace Parted the Clouds of My Winter”, 38” x 38” (framed) mixed media/panel .
I’m very grateful to Joshua Adamo, owner/director of Paragon Fine Arts Gallery in Lewisburg, WV for his support. About a year ago, Josh gave me the opportunity to share my paintings at his beautiful space. It’s fulfilling to share my art in public. A wonderful bonus is that he’s secured several sales, most recently, these two paintings.
It’s restorative for me to create things. I like to use the process of painting to wordlessly reveal feelings and sort things out I may not be able to articulate. For 45 years it’s been a way to better understand and center myself. Making art balances my intuition and rationality.
The psychiatrist and neuroscientist Dr. Iain McGilchrist speaks about the unhealthy and unsustainable dominance of our left hemisphere-oriented society. They’re deeply interwoven, each plays a crucial role in affecting our lives, and to a degree they overlap guiding our behavior. The key difference is in the lenses they offer to interpret life, and perspectives they generate, which then reflect how we experience the world.
Both have been essential to our survival. The left leans toward labels and control; it’s very good at narrow focus, discerning discreet parts, categorizing. It’s view is incremental, mechanistic, linear. He postulates it evolved to aid us in “acquiring things” — like food, materials for warmth, or plants to heal.
Our right hemisphere offers a broad overview, less the parts and more the whole. It’s fluid, recognizes patterns, and senses emotions and the energy of relationships. It “reads the room” and takes in the ambiance of situations or places.
Given how I approach painting, I don’t like to claim full credit for what emerges. I try (in the “Zen” sense — that is, without applying effort) to be open to what unfolds. I aim to be a “rider” as much as the “driver” and don’t know the destination beforehand. A degree of logic and intellectual consideration inevitably comes in, but in the successful, most vital works its role is lessened.
I’m guided by an intuitive sense, responding to the materials with minimal conscious thought, allowing things to flow. My loose aim is to “take a painting to its point of maximum ripeness,” as Picasso said, and to do so in a harmonious way. Through painting I’m trying to retool my awareness by offering room to “listen” to my right hemisphere.
Modern industrialized society is driven mostly by the left hemisphere. We’ve blissfully and ignorantly ignored the larger view of the interrelationships of which humans are a part. We’ve clearly pushed the balance of the Earth’s ecological systems to a brink.
The earth will go on, but we’ve initiated a collapse of the ecosystem balances established over millions of years. We’re radically altering the world we’ve always known. The earth will adjust, restructuring of these systems will happen, but not in our human lifetimes.
Essentially, the foolish notion we’re separate from “nature” and each other has put us in a broken relationship with life on this planet. The grand irony is we may not be part of the life that survives.
It’s hard to hold disparate points of view without having a compromise at hand. I live within this materialist culture, make use of its unsustainable conveniences, and the paintings I make are also objects for sale in an extractive consumer society. And I study and can sense the tragedy unfolding because of our domineering beliefs, societal ways, and disconnected relationship to the earth. I’m trying to live the questions toward my own harmonious resolution.
I doubt there’s a simple rational “answer.” I’m deeply affected by my relationships, with people, animals, and all life forms with which I engage. Painting is a way for me to gently probe all this indirectly, without necessarily following a logical linear path.
At times it offers me a way to “ask” unformed questions. Looking at the paintings upon completion, I like to allow a title to come forward in response to what they reveal or suggest in that moment of my life.
“This Rich and Precious Earth” felt like it was at once addressing the deep beauty of our wondrous world, the terrible storms we’ve unleashed, and the current losses and pending changes on the horizon. The ongoing drama of Death begetting Life.
“Her Warm Embrace Parted the Clouds of My Winter” was completed not long after the ending of a brief and sweet friendship. Its closure was the result of an unexpected rupture. It too, was a death of sorts.
But in the months after, I came to recognize how that short yet potent relationship had nudged me beyond a previously safe, falsely stoic mindset that I’d adopted for security. It reawakened me to a more vulnerable, more fully engaged life.
Change is challenging for most of us. Yet mystery, openness and spontaneity (all of which our culture abhors) are also what gives life richness and vitality.
I’m always honored when others find resonance in things to which I’ve applied my energies. Purchasing a work takes that one notch further. For me, in a way it reveals and validates our unseen, unspoken, undocumented connections. Especially in these frazzled times, seems we all could use more trustworthy connections.
“Her Warm Embrace Parted the Clouds of My Winter”, 38” x 38” (framed) mixed media/panel .
RSS Feed