Artist statement, part 1. My art focuses upon contended or contested persons and ideas. I paint my portraits of persons and of Ideas beautifully in a certain aesthetic sense; however my intention is not to make pretty pictures. My intention is to make art that is ponderable. To that end, I continuously research hundreds of possible Portraits of Ideas.  That research includes images, words by or about the subject. Before I begin a new painting, I must be sufficiently familiar with the subject. On the given day, I choose from the hundreds of possibilities to spend however much time on this next painting. And there is no turning back; it will be done. Each painting is a project, an experiment, a meditation upon. I am not interested in plagiarizing my style, e.g. of Darwin on Fire, to create a series of similar portraits. No! If the next painting demands totally, different styles,   techniques and so on which I have never used than I will learn.

 

From the beginning, as I merge with each chosen portrait, my unconscious selects styles, images and words to be appropriated or created. Thus in Darwin on Fire, from the beginning I knew that I would paint an appropriated image in a pixelated style; which would be over painted with 20 pages of Darwin’s words, edited to form a short autobiography from his vast writings. So I needed to learn to paint a pixelated painting and to write with paint.

 

Now the words and images that I paint are meant to be objective, in the sense that science is objective. In other words, if someone looks upon my Centaur of the Russian World or my George; the critical viewer should not be able to tell if I as the artist am pro or con Putin or Washington. In George, the words are George Washington’s words regarding his commerce in buying and selling of his slaves. These transactional words are objective, matter of fact and pragmatic; without political pontificating and philosophizing. For sure, the artist subjectively selects his subject; just as the scientist subjectively selects his research project (e.g. dinosaur droppings or Haley-Bopp comet). But once this artist selects his subject, he strives for objectivity in this painting project.  

 

Please forget how such words as objective and non-objective have previously been used to describe art. My process is both subjective selection (which is very different than automatic painting) and objective representation (which is very different than realistic representation). My process is both conscious and unconscious both in research and in brushstroke. The objectivity of my work is an artistic goal executed with self critical intent that demands: pro or con neutrality in my process of choosing and painting combinations of images and words.  The objectivity goal is that each viewer whether pro or con, e.g. Putin, will say "That's what I’m talking about." Unlike the cartoonist, whose purpose is lampoon a person or idea; and unlike the politician, whose purpose is to hype and propagandize; my purpose, while throwing paint aesthetically, is to inform canvas with portrait of contested and contended person and idea. From before the first to final brushstroke, my painting strives to annihilates every gratuitous word, image, cliché, technique, style and whatsuch. What is left is an objective portrait of a person and idea.