Artist Statement: ‘El Jardin Adentro’ (the garden within)This suite of paintings grew out of a prolonged engagement with the interior garden in our modest home. I had been drawn to this green, light-filled space since we had moved into the new house, and when my wife suggested I do a painting for our living room: “something which mixes up the interior with the exterior,” the idea of bringing the garden in and us out immediately grabbed me. I set to work and “interior/exterior” was born. It seemed to me that I was on fertile new ground. A self-portrait and two other paintings soon followed, but by this time I had become truly enchanted by a particular plant in the garden. Known as “la piñonona,” its large forking leaves yearned upwards. Soon its ascension became my own. Somehow its striving heavenward became identified with my own struggles for growth. As I watered the garden so I watered my soul – and we bourgeoned! I believe it was the poet Elizabeth Barret Browning who spoke of her ‘vegetal love,’ and for the first time I began to see what she meant. I too grew slowly and sought the sun which was my love…
The garden has become, over the last two years, a rich metaphor for my secret soul, there at the center – my soul and my home. A place of refuge and growth, striving and peaceful solitude. It is with a joyous heart that I make these paintings, at last, available for public viewing. I have seen my soul, and thrown its colors, and it is beauty, and it is light – freedom and a strong place to rest and refresh.
Artist’s Statement: ‘Bandit’s Roost’“Bandit’s Roost” is an image that has absorbed me for a good six years. The original photograph was taken by Jacob Riis around the turn of the century in New York. Riis was one of the pioneers of socially conscious photography. He documented and exposed things that blew peoples minds back then. At that time people weren’t as familiar as we are with the apparatus of photography and when he set up his equipment in the perilous back alleys of New York the thugs he caught in their natural environment had no idea what he was up to. Suddenly – Ka-Boom! The explosive flash powder of those days went off, rendering everyone momentarily (and conveniently) blind, allowing him and his assistant to make off with the equipment before the bandits could recover enough to beat him up.
What I like about painting these images (besides the cool time travel factor) is the wonderful psychology of the faces – their stance – these are real people – survivors, somewhat like the New Yorkers of today. I often have to work on these painting for months at a time, they tend to be labor intensive, but there is a kind of partnership which forms between me and the image, as long as I stay close to it, I’m O.K. I can’t do anything wrong.
My use of photography differs markedly from the Pop artists, who also appropriated images, in that my work tends towards the mysterious and the transcendent. The Hollywood show grew out of several things coming together. I had been working on these murky mysterious Hollywood portraits, trying to get to something indefinable. I had prepared several to a certain point, when my wife (once again!) intervened and said “don’t touch them! I want to do a fashion show with these painting decorating the runway.” We aproached Darla in San Miguel de Allende and she was thrilled by the idea of a “Hollywood Night.” “Spend an evening with the Stars,” we said. And so it was.
