The “Defining Heuristics”
Five Arenas of Art
Style
After a lifetime of traveling and creating I’ve narrowed my focus to the abstract qualities of my artwork and the expression of my personal aesthetic. These are the heuristics/ideas that drive my work. Though I make art with a variety of media, it’s the heuristics that binds my body of work together more than the media I use or the style I express. Though, when one takes in my work comprehensively, my style, articulated by craftsmanship and beauty, certainly becomes obvious.
I seldom, if ever make one-off pieces. Even if a truly unique work exists for now, it’s only because I’ve not been able to get to the rest of the series.
Many Wells
My foundational influences come from Neolithic iconography, archaic Chinese bronzes, and Western aesthetics, especially in the form of classically trained artists who over the centuries have relentlessly pursued the mathematical and mystical beauty of proportion. In my work repetition, rhythms, and patterns converge harmoniously from geometry and motion into landscapes, dwellings, or imaginary objects illuminated by the dance of light. It all integrates with my intuitive application of color, line, and form, while I never loosing sight of balance as so elegantly expressed in the works of masters of clay and ink from Japan and China—at once both ancient and modern.
Having traveled a lot, including a period of living abroad, my work has become a rich tapestry of symbolic and cultural influences that expresses, through the blending of diverse medium, my search for universal realities which bind people together—infusing my work with deeply-felt egalitarian concerns for humanity and nature. My art echoes timeless mythic cultures, weaving layered objects of depth and beauty. Each one enshrines a Daoistic dance of opposites—light and dark, complementary colors, hard and soft materials, intuitive and analytical creative processes.