When I was young I knew that superstition, magic, & supernatural things were fictional, yet I enjoyed them nonetheless.
Statements &
Rumours
You test yourself when you test your beliefs;
what makes those beliefs credible?
Creating involves devotion, attention-to-the-problem. This is all that counts. Paint; plant; draw; make it work in a parsimonious way.
Fix what is forgotten; break what can’t be broken; plan a quick escape from everything holding us back.
Nursing a diabetic cat until I had to bury it; making friends where there were none; I’ve voiced opening lines and acted odd for a day; played a guitar in the quiet charming night; been hungabout hangovers; paintings hung to be seen; I do, and I still do that which is within my grasp, all things considered, to good effect. At the risk of being in only one place at one time, I give my hope this site and the sight of my work will convey the hard work of simplicity.
Embrace the obvious with skepticism
that you don’t overlook the obvious.
Some things take time where there is a poverty of time. Some times are difficult when nothing stands in the way. What I see in art that pleases me is self-absorption, that, to me, is devotion.
Art is fictional, yet no less magical than what enthralls a child. If there is value in this, there is value in art.
Live Life Artfully.
All things start small.
Louisiana
alluvial flood plain
I grew up with three siblings on the outskirts of Baton Rouge, not quite the country, but to my young mind our home stood at the edge of a wilderness. The other side of our backyard fence, beneath the moss-covered hardwood trees, my older brother and I would spend many afternoons and summer days exploring woods and creeks where we would find snakes, bugs, frogs, and turtles. There was a lake behind the house where the deep, resonant mating calls of the bullfrog broke the damp, still night air, while peacocks in the morning would make their own distant, shrill announcements from the lake’s far bank. On an occasional cool morning the peacocks would come into the yard, often to be chased back over the fence by our delighted morning selves.
During these years I recall sitting on the living room floor and drawing volumetric, foreshortened images in pen of my best friend riding towards me on his training-wheeled bike. My mother made special places on the wall to tack up these works of art, giving them special recognition. My drawing, and the paintings which came later, has always been about creating a small place where the mind can go to explore, and to find things living there which never cease providing new imaginative experiences. In this respect, my first impressions of this world I was born into are still with me.