About once a week someone asks me how I developed my style of painting. The following is an artist statement that I drafted for Artciencia, an internet forum which considers the scientific underpinnings of art.
“My art borrows from the theory of pointillism and the digital effects of photographic half-toning. It is very much a product of pop culture. Covered with one-inch dots cut from magazines, my paintings, which are typically quite large, are couched behind a montage overlay of juxtaposed, equidistant grains. On the physical plane, the painted image lies behind the dot matrix, but at times the viewer’s eye shifts and the dots recede, effectively pulling the viewer in for a closer look at the small, sampled spots.
This visual manipulation alters the original image in much the same way granular synthesis alters an auditory recording. Playing on the visual dichotomy of high and low frequencies, the result is simultaneously a deconstructed cloud as well as a series of individual images spaced at equal intervals, which are constantly combined and averaged by the human eye to create the resulting residual effect.”
It is really an everyday series of events that led up to the development of my particular style. For several years I worked part time as a graphic artist while my kids were little. It was great because it allowed me to work at home and be with them a lot. But it also had a down side in that I was always executing someone else’s idea and not working on my own art. I had always been a pretty good drawer but had only dabbled in painting in high school.
As I began teaching high school, my attention veered more toward my writing. Then about ten years ago (I can’t believe it has been that long!), my friend Cricket McNatt and I decided to rent a studio space together where she could paint and I could write. (This was located right across the street from The Image Warehouse where I now paint.) As we shared that space just off the square downtown, I would watch her paint and decided I wanted to try to do it, too. I enjoyed the process of making my own canvas, prepping it, playing with the pigments. But when I had “finished” my first piece, I was not entirely happy with the results. My drawings up to that point had been based on realism, and this acrylic painting did not live up to my exacting standards.
About that time Cricket invited me to go with her and her art class from UT Tyler on a field trip to Houston where the works of Robert Rauschenberg filled up all of the museums for a special show. I had encountered his work in magazines and liked it, but when I saw it in person with its large scale, vibrant colors and collage elements, I was amazed. On the way back home I sprawled on the back seat of the chartered bus, completely overwhelmed by what I had seen that day. I must admit that I was momentarily tempted to quit painting entirely, thinking that I could never reach the level of excellence exhibited by Rauschenberg. But as I asked myself what it was I really wanted to change about my painting style, I realized that I wanted to add depth to my canvases, to break up the flat surface and even to partially obscure the painting itself.
As I contemplated this problem, I looked up at the ceiling of the bus overhead and saw the speaker with its grid of circular holes perforating it, and the idea to overlay my canvases with a matrix of dots came to me quite clearly. As I had been experimenting with collage for some time, mostly in relation to the written word, it was a short leap to realize that I should cut my dots from magazines, thus allowing me to include small images and unexpected colors to my paintings.
The next day I experimented and was pleased with the results as my first dot painting progressed. I am proud to say, by the way, that this first painting was purchased a few months later by one of my former high school students, Heath Schwartz. He saved his money and bought my first painting. (On the day he took the piece home, we were both giddy and I think we both cried a little!)
As my style developed, I discovered that I could add a whole different level of meaning to my work with the dots. Now my mixed media canvases often contain an almost subliminal visual and psychological subtext. For example, in the composition of “Striped Sofa with Girl,” the stoic model is symbolically equated with the furniture on which she reclines. The “prison stripes” of the sofa refer to the restrictions often placed on women by society. The skewed colors of the forward-looking female’s flesh are symbolic of the ways she is colored unrealistically, and sometimes unfairly, by the opinions of others. The dots, containing tiny images of things such as teacups, cosmetics, and fashion accessories, are cut mostly from magazines that offer domestic guidelines for women.
The main reason I write today is to thank Cricket for being such a great friend and an encouragement to me continually, to thank Heath who bought my first piece before he left "Big A" behind for the "Big Apple," and to thank Peter Gould who rented us our first studio space at a ridiculously low price and has believed in my art from day one.
The images at the top are of my first studio, Striped Sofa with Girl, and the same painting on display at the Fort Worth Contemporary gallery.
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