[ B I O G R A P H Y ]

A SHORT HISTORY OF ART
A lifetime in art has taught me that everything is going on everywhere all of the time. “Movements” are really the product of taste-makers, who, by definition, have no heart. Theirs is the world of influence, or power, if you will. This is good news for the artist because it frees the eye! The bad news is that we have choices to make.
I chose narrative art from the menu and have never looked back (some people think I can’t look back because I’m already there). My heart is in American art of the 1930’s and 40’s and the sentimentalism of the “Saturday Evening Post”!
My intellect matured in the postwar 1950’s when existentialism and abstract expressionism were the chief means for “creative” people to deal with the great catastrophe that had befallen the world. Those movements were not much help, certainly no love was to be found there (although, it can be argued that they were driven by a perverse form of sentimentality not unlike that to be found in the “Post”!)
Time and space have collapsed in art but not in the self of the artist. I happen to think we are still driven by the need to tell stories and to create illusion and order where none exists.
My own stories are basically domestic and tend to be ironic. They may not be visually or conceptually whole, because two or three ideas may intrude on the same piece, but they are intended to be “stories” that contain location, exposition, conflict and resolution. They just aren’t the great stories of salvation or war that populate the history of art and take up so much valuable space on museum walls.
Finally, irony is one of the great forms of the comedic, which drives me — and comedy is anarchy.
So there you have it!!