Interactive Relationship

Perhaps I have chosen abstraction because of an uneasiness with the female nude as the embodiment of my voice. Many tomes have been written by now about the oppressive male gaze. But the artist must ask what the painting needs. The subjected woman is not enough of a subject for my conversation. Substituting a male body hasn’t worked for me, either. From a positive perspective, abstraction has been the most direct means for exploring counterpoint in painting. Many of my paintings are diminutive, intimate, three to five inches in either direction. Rather than physically overpowering (as many men are to women), they suggest a more interactive relationship with the viewer. Smallness in art may be coming under a more favorable star, but in my lifetime size has mostly been a directly proportional measure of importance and, though no one would admit it, quality. The small works are painted on paper. Arthur Danto has aptly pointed out that paper, since it is so expendable, is considered a less “serious” medium than canvas, panels, or walls, and so has become associated with the artist’s “intimate moods.”2 Paper and women have a lot in common in that they both have developed a reputation for being less than serious but good for intimate moods, and maybe even expendable. I take these stereotypes, these preconceptions, and play with them. I draw on the bare paper — actually four-ply museum board — and then apply multiple layers of a gesso wash to protect the painting from the board. This way I can be serious, intimate, expendable, and conservable all at once.

Progress takes the form of composing contrapuntal conversations between laughter and seriousness, permanence and impermanence, tradition and inspiration. They will be different from another artist’s compositions, and the value of each of our works will be measured by how valuable our ways of thinking are to our fellow human beings and how completely we have transferred our conversations into the medium of painting.

The time has come for art, which is not ideology or theory, to offer us a greater vision of human potential. My paintings are saying that the quality of that vision is not dependent on size or material, though they take advantage of both. They say this simply by being as good as they are — however good that is — and small. That is, the intervals within the painting, not its size, are a measure of quality. A verbal language has developed simultaneously with the visual language of my paintings. Not only have I written about contrapuntal painting, but also each image has a poem connected with it. Words have helped me focus my interest. I see the words and images as different facets of the same stone. The language and the paintings try to live up to each other. There are dangers in such a pursuit; for instance, the language could limit the paintings. I could become so committed to a verbal idea that the visual ideas are subordinated to it, or cannot flourish in their own way. This is itself a contrapuntal conversation.