The following essay, describing the meaning and process of my work, was delivered at an International ‘Art & Philosophy’ Conference, on a theme of “Visual Intelligence and The Sense of Art”, and it accompanied a display of the paintings viewable on this website.

The Eyes as Window to the Soul, Revived in Contemporary Oblivion  

          In describing the nature of my artwork, and its possible relevance, I’ll focus mainly on the notion of visual complexity.  Visual complexity is a prominent characteristic of these paintings and discussing how they may illustrate relationships between complexity and coherence seems most relevant to the conference theme, ‘Visual Intelligence and The Sense of Art’.  
          First of all, I would distinguish between visual complexity and sheer activity in a similar way that scientists make that distinction in scientific theories of chaos. Complexity is defined by highly varied ‘but interrelated’ patterns, where the many interacting and interweaving aspects are difficult to understand.  I would further add that as it applies to the creative artistic process these interwoven aspects are perceptual and they are capable of latent meanings that may eventually ‘self-organize’ and emerge in a coherent way.  For me as an artist, the coherence results ultimately from a correspondence of form and spirit.

          I should mention that the title of this talk, ‘The Eyes as Window to the Soul, Revived in Contemporary Oblivion’ combines a common proverb, “the eyes are the window to the soul”, with a reference to the well-known essay by the renowned art historian Leo Steinberg entitled, ‘The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion’.
          The common proverb came to mind in the way it links vision to the experience of being.  In the same way, the Steinberg essay asserts that in Renaissance art, ‘seeing is believing’ when it comes to revealing the divine within the realm of concrete human experience.  The essay describes how religious imagery in Renaissance art portrays the mystery of divine spirit vested in a human form, and how these mysteries of incarnation point to articles of faith. 
          The very word mystery describes a purely spiritual form or interpretation, where the physical forms of religious rituals are meant to embody mysteries of a truth beyond reason alone and beyond complete understanding. 
          This returns us directly to the artist’s creative process, which evolves in rather the same way, toward a correspondence of form and spirit.  In creating art this correspondence is reciprocal, and it is nicely put in this related quote from the Steinberg essay… “The image then, is both natural and mysterial, each term enabling the other”.

          If the deeper ‘sense of art’ is to be grasped, it will be primarily through the concrete nature of visual experience. The endeavor a visual artist undertakes is decidedly not a course than lends itself to description through the linear written or spoken word.  Neither is full comprehension of such endeavors possible through the mind as an analytical organ of reflective thought.   Entry into the world of images is predicated on one approaching with the appropriate mode of spatial awareness, in which the conceptual mind quiets itself away from the threshold, and so acts as a resource instead of a conductor.

          To be sure there is a qualitative difference between art that is known through the eye as an image in the visual mind, and art that relies on the conceptual mind as the primary and ‘interpreting’ instrument of the experience.  However, an artificial and dogmatic rift has evolved between the visual and conceptual mind, where these minds are considered competitors in the primacy over the image.  This is a debasement of the initial insights of ‘conceptual art’ as presented some thirty years ago. 
          Recognizing the dynamic between visual and conceptual experience as a more interactive and holistic process has had a formative effect on my own work, and has revealed, in my view, the academicism in much of contemporary in art created over the past 15 years.   

          My creation and interpretation of images is a process that is based largely on phenomenal experience.  But that base of concrete phenomena encourages a creative process characterized by a continuous responsive moment, and an ‘experience of being’.  In this modality of being, the individual self is sublimated in a larger field of awareness.  It is in that field of awareness that complexity thrives and may culminate in realizing a visual image that is integrated and whole.  This mode of ‘being and responding’ can be surprising and mysterious, and engender a ‘sense of the divine’.  
          As I mentioned earlier, a salient characteristic of my work is its visual complexity.  I also made a distinction between complexity and sheer activity. In my artwork the many colors, strokes, marks, swipes, tones, shapes and surface changes, combine to make patterns full of visual activity. Yet, ‘when the painting succeeds’, there are dynamic energies within the abundance of activity.  And whether they are vigorous and discordant, or more concordant and subtle, they ultimately form an overall and coherent emotive effect. 
          To the extent there is a coherent overall effect in the work, the question is where does it come from?  The work is abstract but not entirely non-objective, at least with regard to the nature of light & ‘tonalities’ in concrete visual experience.  This common aspect to visual experience is defined by the overall lighting characteristics, as in any of those shifting qualities of light from dawn to dusk, or from even the changes from incandescent to fluorescent lighting.  The more distinct the overall lighting circumstances, the more concentrated is the particular emotive effect.  Those overall tonalities and chromatic qualities are examples of coherence within infinite diversity, both in common experience and ultimately in the potential of art forms. 

          The paintings I am showing here are made of two rectangular canvases that are then joined to form one complete image.  Initially, this ‘combination format’ emerged from a process of spontaneous choices that eventually resulted in a deliberate and contiguous pairing of rectangles, one of which is typically a slightly off-square vertical while the other is very horizontal.  I view the horizontal panels as having to do with subjects of nature and landscape, while the off-square vertical components represent an implicitly figurative or human presence in the overall image.  
          More recently, having worked with this long horizontal format for sometime, I changed the format to combine these panels top-to-bottom, into a square.   While the horizontal format allows for a dialogue ‘between’ the subjects of man and nature, the square format has emerged with an upper and lower register, allowing for a dialogue ‘above’ and ‘below’, as in moving from conscious to subconscious, or heaven to earth.
          These paired elements and the contrasting imagery they contain are meant to be seen as forms that convey an archetypal sense of meaning, rather than portraying a specific subject.  In some of these works the imagery within this format verges on representation of figurative and landscape patterns in a slightly more literal way than in other works where it is implied more through the handling of the paint surface and color.  The decisions about the degree of abstraction in a particular work are determined in the course of the ‘painting’ process.  This allows for even the most improbable juxtapositions of color and line to demonstrate a kind of truth that is appropriate or inherent in each particular image/process.
          The rectilinear canvas formats are decided in advance. Their vertical and horizontal forms provide absolute terms within which the painting process occurs.  I realized that these absolutes actually support rather than hinder the flow of constantly changing visual patterns.  At first the format helps to reveal correspondences that drive forward a great diversity of pattern changes.  Then, in a curious and contrary way, it also eventually encourages the patterns toward reciprocal coherence. In this way the process is generative.

          After finishing a work, I emerge from the process with an intriguing sense for certain image forms in the previous work that often suggest directions for the next image I pursue.  Then the process begins again with the next pursuit for coherence of form and spirit.