We are all subject to a flood of information on a daily, if not hourly, basis via a variety of technological means: emails, text messages, Facebook, Twitter, online newspapers, countless websites, as well as television and radio. As a result, I’ve become interested in how our ability to receive and assimilate a myriad of information on a constant basis can be reflected in a 2-dimensional format. Moreover, with such a wide array of information from so many sources, one is necessarily obligated to discern what information is true, verifiable, and good, from what is false, speculative, inflammatory, and bad. I try to reflect this in my work through complex compositions that meld these ideas together. Using contrasts of color, shape, placement, quantity, size, as well as other types of visual contrasts, and through intuitive investigation, I try to sort through and bring some type of order to this chaos of daily information overload. The paintings have become a record of an autobiographical visual language that consists of codes and symbols combined to suggest personal narratives that are juxtaposed next to or on top of previous statements. This creates a layered history in the paintings much in the same way as we store memories or assimilate and make sense of information. Some shapes are strong and vivid, while others become broken and incoherent, only suggested by the pentimenti left as a visual reminder of their previous existence.
Coupled with my interest in having composition reflect this contemporary media deluge, I am also interested in colors ability to relay information as well. For instance, comic books have traditionally used color to portray notions of truth and falsehood, as well as the universal notions of good and evil. Comic Book characters in their oversized bodies, personalities, and colorful costumes have become a kind of contemporary American mythology, and like all mythology’s they are expressions of these timeless questions. I enjoy using palettes derived from depictions of “superheroes” and “super villains” because the conflicting nature of these colors is a mirror of the world we live in. In addition, this affords me the ability to add a subtle non-representational narrative and hierarchy to the compositions. Initially, I was drawn to the 1980’s Superman comic book covers as the source of my palettes, because they date from the time of my teenage years and Military Service. Good and evil were still being described to us in black and white. The Cold War was still in progress, and we had a clearly defined enemy. Comics were drawn and written in those terms as well, and the colors were saturated and vibrant. As I have developed these ideas further, I have delved into the comics of the 1990’s as well as those from our new century for sources of color. In more contemporary comics, the concepts of both good and evil, like the information we are now assaulted by, becomes far less clear and much more nebulous. Good and evil often exists in a gray area in between. As a result, the colors become more deep and neutral. I am also influenced by the overall composition of the comic book page. I am intrigued by how comic artists use the size and shape of each panel to depict time and space, to speed through time, or linger on a moment. I think such a device is interesting to use in non-objective painting, and I continue to investigate its possibilities.