For over four decades I’ve been creating “Peoplescapes,” oil, sculptured characters and applied objects on canvas -- often in 3D -- addressing cultural, political and spiritual issues facing society. By juxtaposing people in recognizable places and situations, each painting weaves together a story about contemporary life, filled with layers of detail, symbolism and humor. I have highlighted struggles with race, global warming, toxins in our food, the corruption in the financial, medical and pharmaceutical industries.
“Plane slashing” is the latest abstract progression of my 3D technique; lately I’m tearing, cutting and manipulating the plane of a painting, while integrating it with one or more finished canvases attached.
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Painting into the deconstructed imagery as a whole leaves various portions of the underlying picture(s) intact, resulting in a cohesively transformed multi-dimensional piece.
As this work evolves the experience is liberating, moving from chaos to destruction and on to an intuitive composition somewhere between abstraction and surrealism. Everyday, I take the brush to canvas and, although I am confronted with fear and insecurity, I also tap into a limitless source of imagery. In those moments, time falls away and it seems that the work creates itself.
Born in New York, I completed Bronx High School of Science at age 15 and received a scholarship from the College of New Rochelle to study painting and sculpture. In 1977, I moved to San Francisco, where I continue making new work and regularly exhibit in solo and group shows. I am the author of Peoplescapes -- My Story From Purging to Painting (Babu Books, 2015), an illustrated memoir.
I have also lived in Europe and Thailand, traveled throughout the U.S., Mexico, Central America, Southeast Asia, India and Nepal, which has served to develop my painting style and sharpen my understanding of the cultural and spiritual diversity of the world landscape. I have come to realize that art is truly a universal language.
