“Urban Poem”
Oil/panel
48” x 33”
2026
“Achilles and the Mountain”
Oil/panel
48”’ x 33”
2026
Lots of people have figured out how Gerard Richter is smearing his paint and making a YouTube about it. And that is a good thing. I even learned a thing or two by watching. But a technique is just a technique without something to say. And unfortunately, that is the temptation of using a technique that both makes dramatic effects and is easy to do. And even that is OK, too. The world needs more beauty, even if it isn’t very compelling.
But ever since I saw Richter’s smeared abstracts I knew he had something to say and that it was a technique I would one day possibly need to express what had to say.
In or around 2000 I was in New York. And I had the good luck to see Richter’s large abstracts at a show at the Museum of Modern Art. I was deeply moved. As I write this in 2026, I still remember the feeling of standing in front of them. It almost made it worth seeing so much acreage of museum space devoted to other contemporary art that utterly bewildered me.
After years of using rollers to make paintings, I am finally using squeegees and trowels to apply and remove paint in ways that make sense for my creative needs. This piece even incorporates a drawing in paint underneath the various applications of paint. There is landscape space , there is emotional content and there is tension between these elements.
You also see the marks of the roller as well as the various scrapers and trowels and squeegees.
I’m not sure it is a “good” painting. But it is definitely one where I am working to combine elements.
“Wildfire”
Oil/panel
18” x12”
2026
“Early Summer”
Oil/canvas
24” x 18”
2026
“Blue Ghost”
Oil/canvas
24” x 18”
2026
“Early Summer”
Oil/canvas
26” x 22”
2026
“Fire Season”
Oil/panel
48” x 33”
2026
“Dirt”
Oi//panel
18” x 12”
2026
“Monstrerra”
Oil/panel
24” x 24”
2026
“Abstract”
Oil/canvas
24” x 18”
2026
“Landscapes”
Oil/canvas
24” x 36”
2026
“Puget Sound Summer”
Oil/panel
48” x 33”
2026
I move through a beautiful day as a fish moves through water. The cool air flows over my skin and through the layers of my clothes like gills filling me with new life. My mind and my eye are detached from gravity and buoyed by the fresh promise of something gentle and sweet coming to lift me. I become transparent and swim through memories as banks of salty air by turns thick and thin. The ocean churns and my determination scrapes at something deeper revealing more light.
“Wat Ban Pong”
Oil/panel
18” x 12”
2026
“Wat” means temple in Thai. And Ban Pong is the name of the village where I make sculpture in Northern Thailand. So the title of this painting means the Temple of Ban Pong. It is white and sits on a hill above the town. I like catching glimpses of it in the gleaming midday sun or lit up at night and poking through the trees as I glide home after dark on my scooter.
“Ban Pong”
Oil/panel
48” x 33”
2026
Ban Pong is the name of the village where I live and make art part of the year. I don’t paint there. Not much anyway. I make sculpture. And I love the village where my house and studio are located. There are probably no more than 300 people there with only a few little shops and places to eat. But there are 2 fantastic little coffee shops. Ban Pong also has a small river running through it and is surrounded by steep hills that quickly assemble a huge mountain range.
On top of one of these hills sits a stunning white temple that serves a much larger community than just this small village. On special Buddhist holidays hundreds of people arrive to ascend the 1000 steps up to the temple to make merit or participate in various festivities. The building and surrounding grounds are meticulously kept and constantly being added to and improved upon. During the day it’s gleaming white walls shine in the bright sun and at night it is brightly lit with powerful lights and can be seen for miles. Occasionally, when a storm approaches it will fall into shadow from heavy clouds and almost appears black. The jungle below it is a riotous tangle of green and black and the river is always gray as it is essentially the sewer service for the whole valley and all the villages that follow the rural highway that goes on steadily up for over 50 miles.
The painting was not a deliberate attempt to paint the temple or the village. In fact I painted it in a little studio I have set up in the south of Thailand at my friend’s house. But it looks like a concept painting of the village and its temple. It’s a mess of textures and colors. But so is the village.
The temple appears in the painting as a white schmear on the far right looking very much like it’s being engulfed in the harsh midday light of the tropics and the humid air rising up from the jungle and brilliant green paddies below. At the top is the cerelium sky and at the bottom is the gray river of a thousand sewers.
It doesn’t look like the village in any typical way but it very much feels like it to me. In fact, it looks and feels more like the whole of the village. Whereas the photos I have look very much like the particulars of the village in the frame of the camera but capture nothing of the place as a whole.
Maybe the title should be “Ban Pong: the whole of it.”
“Wat Ban Pong”
Oil/panel
24” x 24”
2026
High on a hill above the little village sits a gleaming white temple where everyone goes. Below it squats a neglected temple rotting in the rice paddies of riotous green. The blue Sky is the eye’s great equalizer.
“Black Temple on a hot day”
Oil/panel
18” x 12”
2026
Thailand is known for its many temples. But it is also known for its many temples that are focused on a particular color. And they really go all out to make everything that one color. However, I never saw a black temple. But I imagine it would be really cool.
Here I painted a temple on a very hot and humid day. Obviously I wasn’t attempting to paint a literal or particular temple or even an impression of a temple. It’s more like an idea of a temple set in the climatic weather conditions I was immersed in at the time: hot humid and hazy tropical days.
“Blackened Landscape”
Oil on canvas
24” x 36”
2026
This is black paint smeared over a painting that was mass produced in Vietnam and sold for a few dollars in various markets. I bought it at a local thrift store where people donate stuff to be resold at pennies on the dollar. It sat on my painting bench for a year. And then one day I went to work on it. I now consider it one of the more interesting and beautiful things I have painted in a while.
The facts I shared above about its providence and how it was made are important to experiencing the harsh poetry of artistic sampling, decay and rebirth on multiple levels. For years this piece probably hung in somebody’s living room providing some visual relief from the stark shabby emptiness of their home. Now, after a brief moment in a place of honor in my gallery, and with a fresh layer of black paint smeared and sloshed about, it sits in among thousands of other pieces of mine in a painting racks collecting dust. Who knows, maybe I’ll donate it to another thrift store and see where it goes.
“Happy Birthday America”
Oil/panel
24” x 24”
2026
I am proud to be a human being. But that doesn’t mean I feel superior to other animals. I’m proud to be an American. But that doesn’t mean I look down on other countries. It also doesn’t mean I think America is perfect any more than I think Humans are perfect.
So here is my flag. It’s pretty. And fresh. But it’s divided and messy. It’s got suggestions of spacious skies as well as a gnawing decay. Well, here we are.
“No title yet”
Oil/panel
24” x 24”
2026
Sometimes a piece just insists that it is finished. I have tried several times to continue developing this piece but each time I stop short of adding anything to it. Someday I may understand why.
“The Temple”
Oil/panel
22” x 14”
2026
I started this painting by rolling paint on to a leaf I cut from a plant in front of my building. Then I pressed it on to the panel. Once that dried I painted and scraped paint over it. I was going to smear more white paint over the leaf to make it look more like the white temple on the hill above my village. But I decided it looked enough like a temple already. So here it is.
“Blue Smear”
Oil/panel
24” x 18”
2026
What is it? Who knows? But I can’t paint over it. So, hopefully time will help decide whether it’s worth the space it takes up.
“Another Search”
Oil/panel
20” x 16”
2026
“Blue Study”
Oil/panel
18” x 14”
2026
Over the past few years I have been using new tools and approaches to making a painting. This has given me a new set of expressive opportunities. I have hardly exhausted the expressive possibilities of the doors I opened. And yet, it seems like there are still new ways to think and feel with these relatively new tools and techniques that I have not put my finger on yet.
Recently a friend asked me what I was trying to express. Without hesitating I blurted out, “authenticity.” That isn’t really a thing to express so much as a quality of what is expressed. But it was important.
Usually I meant to apply that to the brush strokes or subject matter. But now I was thinking about the authenticity of my search. There was something else I wanted to express but I wasn’t even sure what it was. I wanted to give myself permission to wonder around lost. I wanted to let myself make a lot of bad paintings so long as they were part of an authentic search for some poetic truth. By “poetic” I mean a subterranean felt truth about some aspect of life, vision and cognition that shapes who I am but has not been spoken yet … or in my case … painted
So here they come. A parade of questionable paintings.
I won’t know if they are worth the canvas they are painted on for some time. I’ll need to see them on my wall for a while. Put them here on my website. And maybe someday paint something else over top of them.