In my solo exhibitions, there are always folks who wonder if all of the works are by the same artist. My answer is that I like to work in a diversity of mediums, styles, and subjects, and the subject often dictates the medium and style.
Whenever I paint, a struggle takes place between wanting to depict concrete reality as it is, and to express raw emotion and a sense of spirituality. Each work is thus a new trip in which I must find my way. When done, the works usually fit into a loose category of post-impressionism or expressionism, though some tend toward surrealism. As my former mentor in Montreal, renowned artist Yehouda Chaki, reminds me, “You always liked the German Expressionists.” Other critics have dubbed my work “painterly” and “calligraphic.”
The problem with trying to hitch on to any of the “isms” in art is that they do not really convey anything. Categories consist of mere words, while images should speak for themselves. Even the early impressionists never fully agreed on “Impressionism” as the right word for their art.
My style is to experiment with color and form while striving for a sense of elasticity and spontaneous energy. Many of my recent works are “painterly” experimental treatments of Florida landscapes, created both on location and in the studio. Overall, it‘s the process that I enjoy the most. The products are simply what they are, to me and to the viewer.
Though I cover a wide range of subjects, I am greatly inspired by nature. Periodically I return to one of my favorite haunts to work on a series of Everglades paintings, hoping to share my love of the great open skies; the Big Cypress forest; dwarf cypress trees; the Fakahatchee Strand; hammocks scattered throughout the vast “river of grass;” wading birds here and there (not dense like they were when they flocked in the many thousands); ‘gator holes; and the ought-to-be-flowing pure water from the Kissimmee Basin to the Florida Bay. I love and want to document my feelings for this last great wilderness before it perhaps shrinks even more than it already has, to record what is left of the wildly beautiful, fragile Everglades, which cries out to all to be appreciated and protected for all time.
While I will continue doing landscapes to a degree, I am also working on a new “fantastic” series, following my surrealistic “Time and Tide” series, which strives in some small way to relate our mere speck of a world to the vast universe.
