ARTIST`S STATEMENT: IMPROVISATION WITH PAINTS My painting process is comparable to the improvisation of a jazz musician. I start out with a selection of colors, shape them into a beginning melody, and then move out further and further to see where the riff will take me. Music is primary to my art. I paint standing up, with my stereo blasting anything from my favorite Miles Davis, Chick Corea or John Coltrane.The rhythms, beats and patterns I hear create a mood that is reflected in the lines, shapes, and colors on my canvas. It is an active process that demands a looseness and openness to whatever might happen. I currently work in tempera or acrylics, which dry fast and allow me to apply several layers, working on the painting over days or weeks until it comes together in an aesthetic harmony. It is the painting surface that I love—the tastiness of color in its thick and thin varieties—flat and thick to keep the eye on the surface, or clear and fresh to suggest deep space. Line is another love of mine, and I often draw directly with a tube of paint, dissecting the surface in complicated paths. There is always a tension between throw away and control. It is a risk to let the brush or palette knife sweep across the canvas without knowing what will happen. Sometimes the result is an amazing gift, but more often it is a test that requires much patient looking to see what the painting requires in order to complete itself. My goal is to stay as close to the edge as possible—to keep that sense of natural happening, as if the painting had grown itself rather than having been crafted by me. Yet it is the artist’s eye, which seeks to prevail—telling the hand to add that last brush stroke which brings it all together. I paint to loud music--classical, rock, jazz, blues, new age--whatever it is that makes me want to open a tube of paint that day. My limbs move to the beat. I stretch, leap, splash--frenzied or at peace, but never settled, never in a comfortable place. I have to keep moving, to spend my time on the boundaries looking over the edge. I don''t want to paint anything I''ve seen before. My work goes best when I tune out the words in my head and simply engage in the visual experience. I shut off the logical, conscious part of my mind and give myself over to the experience of faith--faith that the work itself will show me what to do next. My current work is about play and ambiguity. I challenge myself to turn random selections into an aesthetic adventure. Each painting takes numerous sessions of quick action painting that is almost accidental, as well as carefully controlled development of color, form and overall design. It is the finely tuned balance between wildness and control that produces the final effect PAINTING PROCESS: I apply swabs of color directly from the tube, and then quickly paint over them with a thin wash (paint diluted with water and glaze), using a large brush and covering the whole canvas quickly. The colors melt and blend. I turn the painting 90 degrees and once again apply swabs of color. This time I flatten each color a bit with a palette knife. Then I use a large brush to cover the canvas quickly with a thin wash. I work on the painting over several days, applying thick lines of paint in quick strokes directly from the tube. I also use a brush to apply colors mixed in jars, often with a glaze added in order to get translucent effects. Next, I screw caps on the tubes of paint, each with a small opening that allows me to draw with the paint, like decorating a cake.I draw more lines, and then start filling in some of the outlined spaces with solid color. I use a variety of approaches until the painting is complete: drawing lines, filling in details, or applying loose strokes with a brush or palette knife.In the last stages of the painting, I spend a lot of time staring at the canvas, scanning its surface, waiting for it to tell me what it needs in order to complete itself. How to Look at Abstract Art ABSTRACT WITHOUT THE STATIC: As a non-objective painter who does not start with any "subject" except the painting itself, it always bothers me when people immediately try to pin down a "realistic" image in my paintings. It''s not that "seeing things" in abstract paintings is so terrible, even if the artist didn''t put them there. It''s that you miss the real view if you spend all your energy trying to turn the painting into something "recognizable" like a figure or flower or landscape. WHAT`S THE "REAL" VIEW? What do you actually see when you look at the painting? Colors, shapes, lines, spaces, and textures are the physical elements that combine to make the total image. A selection of dark, heavy shapes may impress you as somber--light, airy images as mystical--balanced, temperate forms as peaceful. Shape, color, and form have meaning in and of themselves. We react emotionally to these elements even if they create no recognizable object for us to hang on to. Thus, a painting of ragged, sharp forms in deep reds will remind an entirely different feeling from one in soft curves of yellow and white. The handling of space--or the illusion of space--is another element in the artist''s toolbox. Are you drawn into a world of three-dimensional space stretching beyond the framework of the painting, as you might be in a landscape? Or are you kept visually taut, as a skater on a pond, skimming across a two-dimensional surface? The impression of depth, perspective, openness, strength, and other spatial relations are created and controlled by the artist. COMPOSITION GUIDES THE EYE Have you ever looked at a painting or photograph and felt it was "off balance"? One of the big differences between amateur snapshots and professional photographs is the poor composition of many snapshots. Perhaps all the action is centered on the left side of the photo, with nothing but empty space on the right. It gives you the feeling it''s unbalanced. Composition (also called "design") is one of the first things art students are taught. In a nutshell, the idea is to have a balance of visual elements without making the weight so balanced that the art becomes boring. If everything on the left is exactly equal to the right, and the top to the bottom, you may have balance, but you lose interest. Getting the composition right--that is, balancing the elements of color, line, and shape while maintaining a dynamic tension--is a major preoccupation of the painter. If you add a blue brushstroke to the bottom left-hand corner, for example, you may have to change something in the top right-hand corner because of it. You can''t concentrate on one section at a time, ignoring the rest of the canvas, and expect to end up with a composition that works. WHAT SHOULD YOU DO WHEN CONFRONTED WITH AN ABSTRACT PAINTING? When you look at an abstract painting, don''t start by searching for some identifiable object from your world. Instead, try to enter the world the artist created. Relax. Let your eye restful walk over the painting''s surface. Let your heart react to its colors, shapes, and textures. Let yourself be drawn into the illusion of its spaces, the action of its lines, its atmosphere. Step back and look at the painting from a distance. What is its contact as you approach it? Move up close and explore the workings of brushstrokes, paint thicknesses and compositional details. See how the parts are woven together to form the whole. Give the painting time. No artwork can be understood and appreciated in a ten second glance. Good art should grow on you, becoming more interesting and more pleasant to look at as you live with it. You may still "see" things in abstract paintings--finding birds and trees and animals hidden in the shapes. There''s nothing wrong with this. But by opening your eyes to the potential of the world the artist created, you may see more than you ever expected to see in abstract art.