My paintings and video installations originate in landscape, most often beside rivers and estuaries. Since 1993 my studios have been on the western shoreline of the Hudson River in Greene County and in New York City. While my paintings and video appear mostly abstract, I work from direct observation and close study on-site.
Fluidity is the through line that connects all of my work; It is a property shared between my subject, water, and the materials that I use, oil paint and video. Inherent to each, is the attribute of viscosity, a variable that can be determinative, surprising, and often beyond my control. In the dynamic between painting and video, each process exerts an influence that enriches both.
Exploring paint as a mimetic medium, I use its physicality to perform in ways that are similar to my subject. Similarly, bodies of water and electronic media share attributes of motion and luminosity.
I use the water’s mirrored surface as a giant aquatic lens that assimilates reflection, color, and pattern. It collects activity from the sky above, the reflections of clouds, fog, foliage, barges, tugs, and tankers. At nighttime, these reflections can be particularly luminescent and mesmerizing. Looking at the surface of bodies of water is a way of indirectly observing the world through reflections. Mediated observation can suggest metaphor and render what is known equivocal.
Recently I have noticed an inverse relationship between my paintings and work in video. With the former, I collapse hours of observation of a river’s ever-changing surface into the still surface of a painting. While in the latter, I use still imagery to embody the passage of time.