Why this- why now?
At a recent opening of my show in Rochester, one relatively sophisticated viewer pointed out that some of the paintings looked like they were by different people. The organic, textured, flowing, hot colored abstract landscape next to three muted, resin coated circles and dots bothered him. Tenerife. 36x72 Specimens 30x30 Not me, though. Having come to painting late, I insisted on spending a few years going through many stages of representational rendering- flowers, fish, fruit, figures- and that’s just the ‘f’s- to prove to myself that I could. When I decided I had captured clouds and sunrises and the sea, I got rid of the horizon line- and I was painting abstractly, which had been my goal all along. Rather than experiment in style pastiche or stages I think I paint in paragraphs. A new idea emerges, it gets done again, different iterations, then I revisit what I had thought was finished. When this essay is finished, I move on. Mark Rothko ...