“Wikako”
Oil/plywood
48” x 48”
2012
Wikako was my lover off and on from 2009 to about 2016. She moved back to Japan in 2011 but would come to visit from time to time. And then sometimes she just showed up in my art. This piece was done during a very rare moment when I was teaching art. I was doing a demonstration about the potential power of working on found plywood. She just appeared right there in front of the class. None of my students knew her. They just thought it was a nice drawing but I was astonished by the accidental likeness. And yes, the raw jagged edges where one layer of the plywood was torn back was visually striking against the tender lines that described her young flesh. I made my point more deeply than my students realized.
“The Lesson”
Ink on paper
18” x 24”
2012
“Three Graces”
Oil/paper
24” x 36”
2011
This was my own little private virtuoso piece. These figures were painted freehand with a brush with a live model. I wanted to create these women with vitality and power with the simplest of terms: a single dynamic line made with a brush. Their figures are more isolated than was my original intent. But the result is an undulating frieze. To wit, there is no cross hatching or smudging to create the illusion of volume in ways artists typically achieve this. Instead, I am relying entirely on the placement and the dynamics of the line to create the illusion of volume and movement.
The piece is certainly not a masterpiece, but it is full of little diamonds in the rough. For example, I liked the figure on the left so much I used it in subsequent paintings and even a sculpture called “Archer” done in 2023.
As I write this citation in 2024, I am in Thailand working at a ceramic factory making sculpture. Perhaps these figures would look good in bass relief or etched into the wet clay of a large pot.
Archer
“The Kiss”
Oil and ink on paper
28” 24”
2011
“Enzo Dancer”
Oil and graphite on paper
30” 24”
2011
“Salome”
Oil and ink on paper
30” x24”
2011
“Dance”
Ink and acrylic paint on paper
30” x 24”
2011
