Direct Encounters

“Ekka,” a newly completed painting (33 x 47″). An art collector had this to say when she stopped by my studio recently: “Lately I have wanted to just quietly commune with a work of art. I am not interested in deciphering references or spending time getting the inside jokes. I just want to find a […]

Small is Beautiful

A display at the Museum of Innocence, titled “Istanbul‘s Streets, Bridges, Hills and Squares,” (Photo: Jackie Nickerson) Turkish author Orhan Pamuk (whose books include My Name is Red and Snow, among others) is an advocate of small museums (a topic I wrote about here.) We live in an era of mega-museums that work hard to […]

Useful Space for Thought

Detail from one of my recent painting series, “Angaris” I recently found two statements about painting by Australian artist Helen Johnson that were very resonant for me. While Johnson’s work has identifiable content, her approach and attitudes are aligned with my work as a non representationalist. First, her description of painting from a roundtable about […]

OK Plateau

A universe emerging in the surface of a pan: Still in search of mastery Once we have acquired a certain level of expertise at a task, it is easy to just go into autopilot. Some call that place the “OK Plateau”—where good enough is good enough, and there really isn’t much intrinsic motivation to improve […]