Social media turns works of art into objects of rapid consumption, sometimes supersonic, which I think makes us dangerously insensitive to the enormous amount of work, time, and sacrifice that lies behind each post, each evanescent image.
I like to make art that I do not understand. It shows, unrelentingly, that other worlds are possible.
In art, I find joy but no peace.
Why does all official portraiture always have to be celebratory—if you consider it as a visual catalog of past officials? Why can’t it also be a critical depiction or interpretation?
Can art change the world? Can it start a revolution, or stop one? If it can’t change the world, can it change an individual?
A lot of my work arises out of an accident, or stumbling on some event that spurs me to want to record it.
Anybody who has drawn or painted for any length of time realizes that the intensity of creative work cannot be maintained at a consistent level. There are times when I am overwhelmed with visual ideas and wish I had another pair of hands to set down my perceptions. At other times everything seems dormant, though I realize that this is part of the ebb and flow of life.
Is my visual message strong, simple, and to the point? Have I gone beyond the subject and touched on a more profound universal truth? Have I overworked this to the point of no return?
I marvel at the beauty and generosity of the people who allow me to search into and contemplate them. What is the source of their strength? What wounds are they carrying? How are we the same and how are we different? How can I do justice to my sitter’s integrity?
I am always trying for a visual synthesis of the sensual realism in Baroque still lifes and the cerebral structure of cubist still lifes, not quite there yet, but I am reconciled to the fact that painting is about striving rather than arriving.