NEW WORK SUMMER 2009






Gregory Bateson's image of the mind resembling a chameleon on a mirror is my own self-image lately, It has been the most productive period of my life, but I am never sure where impulse will lead me. This year began with the Teatro Olimpico, concurrent with about three hundred drawings, followed by the fence pieces, followed these paintings of statues, flowers, and landscapes.

The first of these is ARIADNE ASLEEP, done as an indirect hommage to de Chirico, who also used this 2nd century copy of a Greek original in a painting. I thought of Niezchte, who thought in his madness that he had become Ariadne waiting the arrival of Dionysus,entangled as I was in drapery.

Dis-satisfied with my hand, I then did a drapery study of a particularly frigid Canova, and listened to nothing but Arturo Benedetto Michelangeli's recordings of the Debussey Preludes, and drank nothing but peach or guava juice. It was hot outside.

This I followed by a painting of an x-ray of a bearded iris, trying to register all the bristles and filaments with my brush, which makes sense.

Then the terracotta model of a river-god by Giambologna, an artist who I adore, in which I tried to get the troweled-on, thumb-printed, punched qualities of the original onto aluminum screening. Paradoxically, this required the lightest touch.

Three landscapes, one after the other, in remembrance of the days that I used to hitch.

Two flowers:double tulip eros and the dahlia golden leader.

The stalking figure of a wrestler, based on a Roman bronze, one of a pair. Milton's Lucifer crossing the Moulten Marle perhaps, or merely a commuter. Or a sexual metaphor for that matter. Love would then be a black imp crossing Hell.
I have an odd repertoire of statues, flowers, buildings, birds, and faces that I want to do on this scale, which is 24"x 24" except for the tulip eros and two landscapes which are 30"x 30";the third, the seascape, is rectangular and 36w by 28l. All are on four layers of window screen.
Sept 1 2009