I’ve carried a sketchbook with me since I was 16. Barring a few rare instances when one was not available, it’s always been a Strathmore sketchbook. The Strathmore seemed to have the nicest texture amongst day-to-day sketchbooks, the spiral binding is durable, the paper strong enough for average (and often times above average) wear and tear. I tried a few hard-backed journal style books here and there. They were decent but they aren’t as handy; the spiral binding and ability to lay flat are important. At some point or another, I decided the 5.5″ x 8.5″ size was best. It packs down well: fitting just about anywhere, seems unobtrusive even sitting on a table with someone else. Larger sketchbooks declare themselves to the world, as well as the mind. The smaller book is a tad more innocuous and, when the mind approaches the empty page it doesn’t seem so daunting. Afterall, this is for sketches – illustrations of a feeling, intimations of a curve of a branch or a hip or the vast plane of awareness that is Mind. If you give it too much space, it’ll freeze up. Give it too little space and it feels cramped. Just enough, so that the window can rest upon the knee without feeling like there are distant corners that need to be filled, and it will submit and surrender itself. Yes, I trick my own mind into unlocking it’s secrets. But I would never tell it this. Only later, in paintings, do I begin to understand what those early sketches might have been insinuating.

This never-ending sketchbook has been carried with me on all journeys, to the most random of situations, and, in the most mundane of places, has opened up spaces in me that I didn’t know were there. It emerges while sitting in a cafe or at a bus stop, riding on a train or a plane, at my desk, waiting in an office, pr pausing during a hike on a mountainside. The images are rarely planned. They ride along a stream of consciousness echoing my emotional and psycho-spiritual state mixed with my general will and momentum. By allowing the drawing its own narrative, the inner visual language expresses itself unhindered. The observant viewer will note the similarities amongst the imagery and different visual symbols and cues that show up over periods of time, again and again.

It just happens. I sit. I observe. I let my eyes relax. I let my mind… I let my mind just be. I set it adrift. I don’t try to force it into anything. I don’t attempt to still it but I don’t attempt to agitate it by thinking such things as  “this had better be good” or “this is going to be a drawing for a painting”. I allow it to be whatever it is: a tidal wave, a simmering fire, a cool breeze, a breath. I notice how I’m sitting. How I’m holding the pen. I do all of these things and, at the same time, none of them: just sit and draw unself-consciously. I allow elements of nearby architecture or the shapes of leaves or roots of trees or a glimpse of a pattern to be points of departure. Our minds are shaped by the world around them as much as by their own preconditions. Why not allow the drawing the same freedom? The surface of the page gives way to a penetrable depth. I allow my instincts and intuitions, however subtle and unknown, to draw me onwards. Everything, however, seeks light for growth. It is nice to allow the drawing the same.

The sketchbook is a meditation tracing mental symbols, stories, and tangents, drawing out underlying connections, seeking, however organically, to find logical conclusions. It has it’s non sequiturs and moments of random association and completely free connectivity. It has moments of clarity, moments of abstraction, moments of pure thought and pure selflessness, and moments of complete, unadulterated, distraction. Then the lines take shape into something that I understand. I could expand on that, I think, I could make a painting out of that.

When I stand in front of my canvas, I flip back through sketchbooks, finding a drawing that speaks to me from a certain place, embodying a direction or vision that I wish to pursue. Only then do the symbols they contain begin to make sense.

It’s been said by some that my work is inconsistent. In a sense, I can agree. I have not painted the same painting a thousand times. I have not painted twenty white canvases or twenty vases of flowers or twenty paintings of things on fire. I haven’t gone out and made twenty mountain landscapes. I haven’t sat down and created a series of still lives. For the record, I do have two still life paintings. They are of The Stapler and a Banana [and] a Gala Apple (I will post them one day).

Someone once said to me while thumbing through my portfolio: “This could all be by different people. Why not take this painting, for instance, and paint ten different versions of it – really hone in on just that floating block right there?”

To be honest, I really didn’t know why not, other than the fact that that idea sounded really quite uninteresting. While it seemed to be an interesting idea for certain and there are people in this world who do that, I’ve never felt like I’m one of them. And I think the main reason is that, in it’s almost scattered approach, my artwork is not an end in and of itself. What I mean is: it’s not my goal to paint the most singularly terrific silhouette that could possibly be the most emotionally evocative silhouette of all time – maybe even be the Mona Lisas of silhouettes.

I paint as if following a train of thought. I am one person with a thousand different facets (Maybe even, dare I say it, ten thousand!). By understanding all of these facets, by exploring them and allowing for them, I can become a better person. By becoming a better person, I can relate better to others, act more compassionately, etc. By doing this I and others can lead, perhaps, a healthier existence. When I focus my attention on any particular facet, that light/energy/vision that is this conduit of “me” passes through that facet and creates an image that is a reflection not only of me but also of my surroundings, my state of mind, my set and setting, what led up to that particular experience of life, etc. In order to see explore that particular facet, I go about painting some representation of it. “It” being a state of mind, an emotion, a psycho/spiritual understanding. When I am done, I look up: I am a changed person – subtly at times, vastly at other times. Sometimes such a length of time has passed and such a depth of experience has been poured out onto the canvas that finishing the piece is like closing a chapter on my life. And opening a new door.

My art is not about any singular experience. That singular experience changes, it comes and goes, ebbs and flows. Life: it is passing and changing and morphing into new and different visions while maintaining echoes of everything that has come before it.

it is because of this that my website is laid out not in any kind of numerical system or specific thematic order, but instead by place. I’ve lived in a number of different locales and, if history is to set a precedent, will continue to do so. Each of those selections of paintings represents a series of moments in my life that reflect my personal growth as it was experienced in that place and time. Ojai, Vermont, Costa Rica, etc… These places had a certain quality of light, I was a certain age, there was a specific energy about the time, and the places had a definite affect on me. What I ate, with whom I interacted, where I walked, how I spent my time, the landscape I traveled – both inwards and outwards: all of this gets translated onto the canvas. What you see when you look at my artwork isn’t the work of a person with a consistent studio who is assiduously retracing his steps ten dozen times to make sure he has really got the gist of the floating brick and, if asked, can paint the best floating brick ever. There are many people like that out there and that is all well and good and they are, in some cases, quite masterful and I applaud them and, at times, find them quite inspiring. However, for me, I find that every time I close my eyes and look inside for something to paint, there is something… else, something new. The visual representations of my path, my personal explorations and my archetypal language are always expanding – new words, new symbols, new passageways constantly want to be explored. If I deny that, then I feel like I am squashing my growth and, in doing so, am doing a disservice both to myself and others.

I’ve spent a lot of time disabling the inner “self-editor”. To allow it back in to say: no, no, no more paintings of anything other than the star pattern for, say, the next ten paintings. This seems like burden, a heavy weight on my soul of trying to fit into a mold.

Sometimes I find myself beginning the same line over again – and I try to interrupt it. What do I mean “the same line”? I mean a line that is so familiar – a curve, a silhouette – and I play “What happens if….” And it leads to new places… The mind is like this: if we travel the same synaptic pathways we create deep patterns in our minds – it becomes a part of the basic flow of our brains. If we dig deeper, ask “what else is in there?”, and really attempt to negotiate that space with an eye for what we might be missing, we might suddenly see something new – something different. And, in this, look at our lives with the same opened eyes.

Sometimes I think that the criticism of my semi-scatological approach to painting is because it would simply feel safer if I didn’t jump around so much. My work seems, at times, to be unpredictable. To be honest, I don’t often know what might happen next, what else might paint, what color scheme I might use. However, I think that the deeper underpinnings of my work are always there: a connection to the divine, a sense of exploring the human condition through semi-archetypal symbols and shapes, a pretty consistent color palette and a pretty consistent line pattern.

Viewing my work is like thumbing through a dictionary of the human experience: it is only consistent because all the words are of the same language and, for the most part, people can relate to those words because it is a set of symbols that describes, explores and, if successful, transcends, the human experience.

I’d like to share an excerpt from “Concerning the Spiritual in Art” by Wassily Kandinsky, published in 1914. I have found the visual representation of the job of the artist, as he describes it, to be particularly helpful when I try to understand my place in this world as an artist. Kandinsky, who might to some seem a bit antiquated today, was a visionary in his own right. As an artist, he was very methodically focusing the internal lens and paint what came up in a semi-logical sense. As a writer and thinker, he was looking to understand just what it is that makes up art, if it isn’t to be a reproduction of the physical world or be a regurgitation of spiritual/mythical symbolism. I’ve heard people say: but his work is just lines, circles, and weird mish-mashes of color. Think of his work as the first few steps into (or out of) the lucid imagination. If it had never been fully exercised and given free reign before (as we do now) then those first few steps were wobbly and unsure at times. But, like a child who has just walked across the room for the first time, the sense of triumph – the sense of really getting somewhere – is unmistakable. Few had done this before his time. He and his contemporaries were, I believe, some of the first pioneers into the world of translating the internal mental landscape, using art as a method of digging deeper and further into the mind-heart space.

Now, onto “Concerning the Spiritual in Art”…

{from Part I/Chapter II: The Movement of the Triangle}

“The life of the spirit may be fairly represented in diagram as a large acute-angled triangle divided horizontally into unequal parts with the narrowest segment uppermost. The lower the segment the greater it is in breadth, depth, and area.

The whole triangle is moving slowly, almost invisibly forwards and upwards. Where the apex was today the second segment is tomorrow; what today can be understood only by the apex and to the rest of the triangle is an incomprehensible gibberish, forms tomorrow the true thought and feeling of the second segment.

At the apex of the top segment stands often one man, and only one. His joyful vision cloaks a vast sorrow. Even those who are nearest to him in sympathy do not understand him. Angrily they abuse him as charlatan or madman. So in his lifetime stood Beethoven, solitary and insulted.

[My note: so Kandinsky is a tad sexist here: 'one man' - let's just give him the benefit of the doubt that, really, he meant more than man, more than woman. he meant any visionary]

How many years will it be before a greater segment of the triangle reaches the spot where [w]e once stood alone? Despite memorials and statues, are they really many who have risen to his level?

In every segment of the triangle are artists. Each one of them who can see beyond the limits of his segment is a prophet to those about him, and helps the advance of the obstinate whole. But those who are blind, or those who retard the movement of the triangle for baser reasons, are fully understood by their fellows and acclaimed for their genius. The greater the segment (which is the same as saying the lower it lies in the triangle) so the greater the number who understand the words of the artist. Every segment hungers consciously or, much more often, unconsciously for their corresponding spiritual food. This food is offered by the artists, and for this food the segment immediately below will tomorrow be stretching out eager hands.

This simile of the triangle cannot be said to express every aspect of the spiritual life. For instance, there is never an absolute shadow-side to the picture, never a piece of unrelieved gloom. Even too often it happens that one level of spiritual food suffices for the nourishment of those who are already in a higher segment. But for them this food is poison; in small quantities it depresses their souls gradually into a lower segment; in large quantities it hurls them suddenly into the depths ever lower and lower. Sienkiewicz, in one of his novels, compares the spiritual life to swimming; for the man who does not strive tirelessly, who does not fight continually against sinking, will mentally and morally go under. In this strait a man’s talent (again in the biblical sense) becomes a curse–and not only the talent of the artist, but also of those who eat this poisoned food. The artist uses his strength to flatter his lower needs; in an ostensibly artistic form he presents what is impure, draws the weaker elements to him, mixes them with evil, betrays men and helps  them to betray themselves, while they convince themselves and others that they are spiritually thirsty, and that from this pure spring they may quench their thirst. Such art does not help the forward movement, but hinders it, dragging back those who are striving to press onward, and spreading pestilence abroad.

Such periods, during which art has no noble champion, during which the true spiritual food is wanting, are periods of retrogression in the spiritual world. Ceaselessly souls fall from the higher to the lower segments of the triangle, and the whole seems motionless, or even to move down and backwards. Men attribute to these blind and dumb periods a special value, for they judge them by outward results, thinking only of material well-being. They hail some technical advance, which can help nothing but the body, as a great achievement. Real spiritual gains are at best under-valued, at worst entirely ignored.

The solitary visionaries are despised or regarded as abnormal and eccentric. Those who are not wrapped in lethargy and who feel vague longings for spiritual life and knowledge and progress, cry in harsh chorus, without any to comfort them. The night of the spirit falls more and more darkly. Deeper becomes the misery of these blind and terrified guides, and their followers, tormented and unnerved by fear and doubt, prefer to this gradual darkening the final sudden leap into the blackness.

At such a time art ministers to lower needs, and is used for material ends. She seeks her substance in hard realities because she knows of nothing nobler. Objects, the reproduction of which is considered her sole aim, remain monotonously the same. The question “what?” disappears from art; only the question “how?” remains. By what method are these material objects to be reproduced? The word becomes a creed. Art has lost her soul. In the search for method the artist goes still further. Art becomes  so specialized as to be comprehensible only to artists, and they complain bitterly of public indifference to their work. For since the  artist in such times has no need to say much, but only to be  notorious for some small originality and consequently lauded by a  small group of patrons and connoisseurs (which incidentally is  also a very profitable business for him), there arise a crowd of gifted and skilful painters, so easy does the conquest of art appear. In each artistic circle are thousands of such artists, of whom the majority seek only for some new technical manner, and who produce millions of works of art without enthusiasm, with cold hearts and souls asleep.

Competition arises. The wild battle for success becomes more and more material. Small groups who have fought their way to the top of the chaotic world of art and picture-making entrench themselves in the territory they have won. The public, left far behind, looks on bewildered, loses interest and turns away.

But despite all this confusion, this chaos, this wild hunt for notoriety, the spiritual triangle, slowly but surely, with irresistible strength, moves onwards and upwards.

The invisible Moses descends from the mountain and sees the dance round the golden calf. But he brings with him fresh stores of wisdom to man.

First by the artist is heard his voice, the voice that is inaudible to  the crowd. Almost unknowingly the artist follows the call. Already in that very question “how?” lies a hidden seed of renaissance. For when this “how?” remains without any fruitful answer, there is always a possibility that the same “something” (which we call personality today) may be able to see in the objects about it not only what is purely material but also something less solid;   something less “bodily” than was seen in the period of realism, when the universal aim was to reproduce anything “as it really is” and without fantastic imagination.

If the emotional power of the artist can overwhelm the “how?” and can give free scope to his finer feelings, then art is on the crest of the road by which she will not fail later on to find the “what” she has lost, the “what” which will show the way to the spiritual food of the newly awakened spiritual life. This “what?” will no longer be the material, objective “what” of the former period, but the internal truth of art, the soul without which the body (i.e. the “how”) can never be healthy, whether in an individual or in a whole people.

THIS “WHAT” IS THE INTERNAL TRUTH WHICH ONLY  ART CAN DIVINE, WHICH ONLY ART CAN EXPRESS BY  THOSE MEANS OF EXPRESSION WHICH ARE HERS ALONE.”

Read the entire book (which is fairly short) here: http://www.mnstate.edu/gracyk/courses/phil%20of%20art/kandinskytext.htm