Elastic Moments
Oil on canvas; graphite on BFK Rives paper
1985–1998
“Every canvas is a journey all its own.”
Paintings
The paintings in this collection are staged as elastic moments, with time and space collapsed into nonlinear dramas. Each painting was cast with specific actors, props, and settings to portray a particular moment stretching across time and memory. During this period, I explored the narrative structures of 15th-19th century European paintings. Familiar characters were cast into my paintings, borrowed from artist-mentors including Degas, Ingres, Velasquez, Caravaggio, Breugel, and Bosch.
Drawings
Before applying paint to one of my large scale Elastic Moments, I created a series of graphite drawings to work out the compositional details. Once the drawings were completed, the imagery was transposed to canvas, so the surface and overall color palette could be developed through successive layers of oil paint.
