My Artist Statement
describing My Art

F
or me to tell people why and how I draw the way I draw would require that I create a book. The emotional foundation, the physical foundation, the spiritual foundation and the foundation of reality that caused me to create this type of art is a life-long story that started many years before I was compelled to create abstract works. It is an epic novel. It involves the many interactions with people , life , love and death that my life’s path has crossed. What I can say is the following more contemporary things about my art.

I
am self-taught. I started creating abstract works because I had a lot of free time at night with nothing to do. So, to utilize my free time I started drawing. My goal was to be able to create interesting things to look at. The more control I developed, the more interesting the abstractions became.

T
he technique I have developed thus far in creating abstract works deserves commentary at this point. I use a combination of pastels and charcoals to create art. Sometimes I also use oil pastels with soft pastels! But the technique at creating various shades was given to me by a petty criminal that I met during my days as a musician. I was sitting around drawing something one day when this petty criminal happened upon my path in life. He observed what I was doing with the pastels and immediately exclaimed the the following: "Hey, when I was in the joint we used to paint using pastels in the recreation room. You have to use your hands to rub in the shadings!" And there you have have my secret. I use my hands, fingers to rub in the shadings. This is the basis of my technique. And this technique caused me to move in a direction that is radically different than that of most formally trained Pastel artists.

P
recision of implementation plays a part in my approach. I am a computer programmer by profession. Programmers must be precise in everything they do. They must pay close attention to detail. This being the case, I must add that my day job has affected my approach to creating abstract works. This is a two edged sword. It is good to create highly detailed and precise works. But in todays world of computers, sometimes , creating such detailed works by hand will confuse certain audiences. They will proclaim: Hey .. this was not done by a human being! A computer did this. Perhaps such an exclamation should be taken as a praise. Anyway .. this whole paragraph was intended to say one thing: ALL WORKS ARE CREATED BY HAND in the literal sense ( remember the criminal ).

M
ost of my works are both symbolic and psychological in nature with a leaning towards eastern philosophy. An interesting point to bring up here is what caused me to create art in the first place. I heard a whisper in my ear one day. The whisper said: Why not draw something? That is how it actually started. I heard those words whispered into my ear. By who or what, I will never know.

M
y art is based upon Jazz Improvisation. I am an ex-jazz flutist. My strength in the area of jazz was my gifted ability to improvise solos. I was a classically trained flutist but when I first picked up the flute, the very first day, I tried to play with music on the radio .. I improvised naturally.

I
am a visual person. I see shapes, colors, designs in my mind. I try to put these things, these shapes that I see in my mind on paper. But I do this in an improvisatory manner. It is ok if I make a mistake of being a mistake. The same thing holds true when a jazz musician improvises a jazz solo. A gifted musician will always make mistakes. But with a gifted musician, the mistakes will just open the door to another idea. The solo will simply continue, telling some story of life, perhaps utilizing a completely different chordal structure but eventually resolving to something the audience can embrace, something that will make them feel at home.

M
y philosophy towards the creation of art was given to me by one of my flute instructors. She told me to always play with total commitment. So when I draw, I draw with deep commitment. In fact, to this day, I have never thrown away a drawing. Every drawing is completed, no matter how I feel during the creation of the drawing. Sometimes I feel that a drawing sucks, i.e. is ugly, during its creation. But I complete it anyway with deep commitment. And I always love the drawing after it is complete.

A
nd finally ..influences? Well, being an ex-jazz musician it is only natural that I create abstract art, what I call improvisatory art. So my influences are both of a visual art and musical art nature. I was influenced by John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, Charlie Parker, Wayne Shorter, Hubert Laws, Dave Liebman, Chic Corea, George Duke among others as musicians. In the art world, I was influenced by Dali, Earnst, Klee, Klimp, Picasso, Kadinsky etc ..

I
n conclusion my art is really about the many components of life. It is about emotion, love and death.