ABOUT THE THREE PAINTINGS RECOMMENDED FOR SALE TO THE
LEHIGH VALLEY HOSPITAL

When people look at art, they often respond to pieces that seem beautiful or skillfully crafted. But for the artist, making a beautiful thing may play a smaller or larger role in his or her intentions. In my paintings, I try to make pieces that are beautiful, but I also try to paint pictures that tell something about the world as I see it. I understand that what I put into the work – or what inspires me to make work – is not necessarily the same thing that someone who looks at my work will “read” from the painting. Still I hope a viewer will find my work not only beautiful but also interesting, even if it is interesting in a way that he or she cannot always describe. Below I will offer some thoughts on the three paintings selected. In my paintings, however, I think viewers might arrive at multiple interpretations without being wrong. The paintings are “poetic’ in nature; they suggest interpretations and meanings but do not arrive at a single answer. “The Budding Art Historian” This painting depicts a girl sitting at a desk reading large art historical tomes. She is surrounded by cultural objects: a Chinese object used for making stamps, a reproduction of an Indian painting, and an American Folk Art horse. The girl is about 9 years old. She demonstrates many adult characteristics: her interest in her scholarly subject matter, her willingness to sit at a desk, and the way she confronts her viewer with both confidence and curiosity. She also demonstrates childish characteristics. Consider the placement of her feet, the sneakers she is wearing, or the fact that she has brought her dog along. So the girl is at once a child and an adult, but that is not the only place in the painting where things are at once one thing and another. There is a relationship between the dog and the horse where they are both alike and unlike. They are not only both animals and both black, but they are in notably similar poses. But a horse is supposed to be large and a dog small by comparison, and here the scale is inverted. And one is obviously a representation of an animal, and the other is “real” – though both are representations by virtue of being in the painting. Similarly, there is a like/unlike comparison among the “legs”. The entire bottom half of the painting consists of a row of legs, but they belong to the chair, the table, the girl, and the dog. “Goat Watching” This painting presents an older child, perhaps twelve or so, at play. He seems to be building a sort of ranch scene, with toy goats, rocks serving as boulders, and some reproductions of flying things strung together to form a fence. He is concentrating on his set-up, and appears not to notice some real goats watching him from outside. Like the previous painting, this painting also suggests multiple relationships, and meanings shift according to the relationships drawn. For example, a toy goat is a “goat”, until a real goat comes along. This similarly begs the question of what is “real” – the toy goat is real next to the graphic representation of the birds, but unreal when seen next to the “real” goats. But all are representations in the same painting and all, therefore, equally “unreal”. This sort of relationship happens repeatedly throughout the painting. Even in the string of birds, the dove is peaceful compared to the bird of prey, but both are benign next to the image of the B1 Bomber. And all lose their meaning as benign or belligerent when strung together to form a fence in a ranch scene. “Barrier” Although the subject matter in my paintings varies widely, I have always considered myself first and foremost a still life painter. Within that genre I have maintained a particular fascination with fabric. I have been working on a series of paintings (of which this one is a part) over the past eight years. The first was made in 2000 and the most recent one – this one -- was finished in 2007. Certain topics are central to all of my art work. I am interested in a high degree of representation and its relation and opposition to deep reality. I am also interested in issues of logic and reason, such as pattern, repetition, counting, and geometry and how these stand in relation and opposition to things mysterious and unknowable. I also never lose my fascination the formal qualities of painting, especially with how any painting is at once illusionistic and a flat surface. In my job as a professor I have taught freshman drawing for twenty years, yet I find that the basic concept of the picture plane grows evermore perplexing and amazing. A viewer can find in “Barrier” a direct and natural visual discussions of all of these themes