Intention and Process
I use beauty to invite people to slow down, allowing their perception to become more sensitive. “Beauty” is my invitation to the viewer to depart from ordinary perception and to bask in the revelation of “the now”. It is a reintroduction to the everyday sublime, to that which is happening in the moment that we don’t always notice. My art reintroduces us to a world we’ve become accustomed to, to the sensory world in which we are embedded, but take for granted, such as the sky or trees. The most remarkable kind of transcendent experience is the one we’re having right now: an experience, free of memory or anticipation of the future. That’s my intention as an artist.
My process is fairly simple: I apply Venetian plaster to canvas on board, using plaster and drywall tools, brushes, baking, cake-decorating, and auto-body tools …plus, whatever else I might find to get the job done. My pigment recipes are proprietary. I paint on custom French marine mahogany cradled panels by John Annesley Co. After the plaster cures, it is burnished with mica-silver/mica-gold. It is then treated with a protective wax layer that bonds the plaster, giving it a final luster. My compositions and colors are inspired by ancient Chinese and Japanese brushwork on paper. Chinese brushwork from the 1200s onward was part of the “Literati” culture: Chinese Sages and their philosophies, Chinese poetry and calligraphy, Chinese Feng Shui and I Ching, Chinese meditation (Qigong and Tai Chi), and Chinese Qin Music are all part of this grand tradition.
More important than the physical process of “producing art” is my frame of mind or state of being. As a Zen Master or Chinese Sage would have done, I start my workday by emptying my mind of chatter or clutter to become present for “the process”. Only then do I begin my work. Often, I feel like a little boy, afraid of jumping into a chilly pool when I approach the blank canvas. Terror and exhilaration “rise up” simultaneously. Once I am “in” the piece however, I experience a sense of disappearing: it’s an “unworldly pleasure” wherein thoughts, the spoken word, and time lose all definition for me. Terror becomes calm, exhilaration becomes focus, and the “crowd” quietly dissipates.
Bio
I was fascinated with art as a child. I received adult-size acrylic paint sets as gifts when I was fairly young, say, ten or so. I wanted to know how “it”’ was done. My wanting to know how things worked also made me disassemble many things around the house, both rendering them useless and often evoking the ire of my parents. When I went back to school to earn a degree in Mathematics in my late twenties, I also took art courses. I was thoroughly impassioned with drawing and painting and studied art with the same amount of diligence that I had applied to my math courses.
In 1991, while attending school, I started to seriously pursue working in oil, acrylic, watercolor, charcoal, pen, and my favorites – Sumi-e and Chinese landscapes on rice paper. In 2005, I was helping my parents with a bathroom and kitchen remodel when I saw a demonstration for a Venetian plaster product. I was dazzled by its luster, glow, and the organic beauty of its ground marble and therefore trained in Los Angeles as an installer. Next, I began experimenting with the plaster as an artistic medium. In 2007, after seemingly endless hours of trying different tools and techniques, I began producing high-quality abstract pieces. I had found a niche, a unique tangent. At last, I had found my voice in “my own medium”. In July 2009 I made a mid-career choice to become a full-time artist.
