Hard Edges

Portraits, self and selfless, present questions that may both reveal and conceal. They may be literal in their interpretations or ambiguous in nature. They may capture a likeness or merely approximate it in abstraction. Sometimes they bare little or no recognizable relationship to the subject and yet are imbued with an innate spirit. Some portraits are complex in their detail while others can capture the essence of a subject with a few strokes of a pen.

Almost all of my portraits, whether on canvas or paper, are imaginary and evolve gradually in a nonlinear process. I intentionally cut the work into incongruous parts and then reassemble unrelated bits and pieces into entirely new assemblages. Sometimes the results are representational. Other times they are more abstract.

Like the portraits, we as a people are the sum of many disparate parts, amalgams of those who preceded us. We are the results of unintentional confluences and unexpected social interactions. As an immigrant society we are a potpourri: a multi-ethnic, mutli-racial society whose strength is built on its dynamism and diversity. It is social cubism. There are so many different ways to see and evaluate how we perceive, identify, and define ourselves.

These are issues that color my point of view and my work:

How to take so many disconnected pieces and fit them together to create entirely

new identities.’

How to take so many different and sometimes incompatible parts and make them

whole.

And finally, how to make order from chaos and create something entirely new.

Portrait Parts

Portrait Parts, a set on Flickr.

The sum of many parts make up the whole. These drawings were created as different facial features were randomly organized to create some surprising results.

I was invited to paint a mural on a bath house at Olin Sang summer camp in Wisconsin called ‘Noah’s Ark.’ An older mural had been painted on one side of the building back in 2004, about 25 feet long and 8 feet high. My job was to create a new mural on the opposite side. But in actuality the mural was to encompass all four sides of the building.

All in all, painting ‘Noah’s Ark II’ was a very challenging but also an extremely gratifying and satisfying project. I loved the notion of starting it all off with nothing more than a pencil, a blank piece of paper, and an idea. But most importantly, without the kids’ drawings, imagination, and inspiration, the mural would not have come to be.

I was also pleased to be able to integrate and incorporate the new with the old. Although stylistically the two murals are adversely different from one another the lines of the ark in the original mural are aligned with the new one thereby unifying both boats. It also turns out that the two murals are almost seamlessly joined together where the rainbows meet, at the corner of the bath house. Finally, and probably the best part is that the two murals, old and new, have become one piece united. I guess that’s how it should be.

In 1963, Pablo Picasso was commissioned to create a monumental sculpture for the city of Chicago. In 1967 it was unveiled to much controversy and debate. I too have found it quite intriguing. What exactly is it? A horse, a bird, the head of baboon? Picasso never really explained it.

I had also read someplace that the piece was inspired by a young acquaintance of Picasso, a woman with a long neck and high ponytail. The Beautiful Lady series is my attempt to visualize this notion. I painted six similar but not exact likenesses of the sculpture and after cutting them apart, I mixed them up and reassembled all of the pieces back together again. It was my cubist solution to a cubist question.

Windows

Years ago in an effort to camouflage the chaos that defined our somewhat disorganized bookshelves I fashioned some decorative doors that pleased me but annoyed my wife for the very reason that they obscured the books. One day she took it upon herself to remove the doors but only after she reorganized the books. So I was left with the doors that I had originally fashioned from old window frames. I had removed the thin wood strips that I had used to create lattice structures in each window panel and searched for something to fill the spaces. Over the years I had collected remnants of canvas that were too small to stretch but too big to discard. With a little trimming they would fit perfectly into the window panels. I had previously used string to secure works together in my ‘Remnant’ and ‘Walk About’ series and thought I could try the same thing with this new ‘Window’ series using the sum of parts to create a whole. In this case, portraits.