Doors and Windows
I have always had a fascination with doors as a means of going from one space into another space. You don’t know what is on the other side of a door until you open it and go through. Similarly, you don’t know what a window can show you until you look through it. Like the concept of Schrodinger’s Cat, anything and everything is there, until you confirm it by looking. The doors and windows I paint only hint at what is on the other side, and leave the rest up to the imagination.
The Process of Music
Wassily Kandinsky worked out a very detailed method of representing music in visual art, described in his book, Point and Line to Plane. My interpretations of music have nothing like Kandinsky’s precision, but proceed instead from immersing myself in the song and putting down on paper what comes to mind as I listen. As in Disney’s Fantasia, those images may come as abstract forms and color, or in the form of a story. The only thing missing from these representations is the element of time. Several of my music representations come in the form of series, where each picture is inspired by a different element, section, movement, or capitulation of a song. Music speaks to our emotions directly, and I am expressing through art my emotional reactions to music.
The Fantastic
I have read fantasy novels ever since I was young, and they had a great impact on how I viewed and interacted with the world around me. I have always looked for the fantastic in life. Ordinary things can be made extraordinary, depending on how one looks at them.
Creatures of fantasy play a big role in my art, and may be seen in my sketchbooks back to my earliest drawings. Mythological creatures come with their own set of symbols and meanings, making them difficult to portray in fine art with any other meanings. Rather than concentrate on an illustrative style, I have chosen to represent myth as an extension of an exploration of my own emotions and concept of self.
