ARTIST'S STATEMENT

"Artists can no more speak about their work, than plants can speak about horticulture"
Jean Cocteau


And yet, an artist needs to know how to talk intelligently about their work, their influences and their technique. It is every artist’s responsibility to see themselves in an art historical context and see how they fit into the world, regardless of the forces that drive them to create.
I often paint horses. The horse is the most fecund animal that can be painted. It has a long and rich background in the history of art. It is arguably the most painted animal in Western and Asian art. But with the advent of the automobile it became obsolete. Serious artists don’t bother with it. But here it is, a subject loaded with pictorial tradition, but ignored in the art of our time.
I work from photographs that I take of my subjects. Animals are not easy to photograph, they’re curious, and they startle easily. Once I have the image I want. I project it on my paper or canvas. It can take anywhere from weeks to months to complete a work. Realism is more disciplined that abstraction. You can’t fake it. I get great satisfaction from doing the difficult thing. I’m not trying to reproduce the photograph to do the painting. Photorealist Richard Mc Lean puts it like this: “I am where I am and down the road is art, like a target. In between is the photo. I don’t go around it. I go right through it.” What comes out at the end isn’t the photograph, nor the experience being photographed but a painting. Like Rene Magritte’s painting of a pipe, “This is not a pipe”. Of course it’s not a pipe; it’s a painting. I want the painting to be a more vivid experience for the viewer than actually seeing it in real life. Brought up to your eye-level the animal confronts you. You look into his eye. Franz Marc writes in his letters from the trenches in WWI about the feeling for life possessed by animals: “Is there any more mysterious idea for an artist than the conception of how nature is mirrored in the eyes of an animal? How does a horse see the world…”
I like to think of my paintings as scenes from my life. My paintings are dedicated to an imagery that, first and foremost, is most meaningful to me. But art that endures must also inspire on a perceptual level. Once I choose my subject, what interests me most is the very act of applying paint to paper or canvas. I want my work to be visually luscious. So, my paintings are ultimately about painting.