New Agrarians Series

At this point in my pilgrimage, it is important for me to move beyond the academic mastery of recording nature and start using that skill along with spontaneous intuition, abstraction, and symbolism to capture the essence of nature and how I identify with it.

Recent works done in Idaho are of the most authentic motifs I can paint right now. They’re all about parallel universes: humanity and nature and transcendence - good things and truly sacred things like relationship, empathy, stewardship; and they call into question our morphine of the moment which numbs us to toxic systems and exploitation. I’m painting that which is seen and unseen.

It’s been said that “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

It is from this perspective that I use subjects closest to me to share my human experience.
Symbolism - the use of symbols to represent ideas, qualities, mystical ideas, emotions, and states of mind; symbolic meaning attributed to natural objects or facts.

I intentionally use symbolism to communicate; listed below are some examples:

• Birds
~ liaisons
~ go-betweens
~ representative Agents
(between us and our collective conscious and/or our Creator)

• Goat or Scapegoat
~ in the biblical ceremony for Yom Kippur the sins of the people are symbolically placed upon a goats head and he is then sent out into the wilderness
~ bears the blame for others or is the object of irrational hostility
~ represents our base nature

• Men and Women
~ In my work when there is a predominant male figure I often have a female in the background and visa/versa; usually you can see or interpret an interaction in the relationship. They complete each other.
~ In other paintings you may not be able to distinguish if the predominant figure is a man or a woman as we all have both feminine and masculine attributes built into us.
~ Though landscape paintings are important and portray much beauty and redemption, for me the human figure is an even more direct means and gives me more tools to communicate…

• Nakedness
~ transparency (no masks)
~ ability to create (pro-create)
~ beauty, love, sex
~ big part of human experience and psyche
~ makes them more multi-cultural (we live in a melting pot)
~ What is the use of disguises and artificialities in a work of art?

• Eyes
~ window to our hearts

• Heart
~ our emotions

• Airplane or Truck
~ my way of communicating that the ideas I have place forth are not time specific but rather timeless

• Moon
~ creation
~ mystery = the mystic
~ wonder, awe
~ time

• Agrarian
~ the basis for our physical being = food, shelter
~ also happens to be my lifestyle right now
~ has to do with the land

• Wasps, bees
~ daily irritations common to all of us

• Angels
~ tangible representatives of another realm

• Menorahs
~ divine inspiration, wisdom

• Eggs
~ awe
~ fruitfulness
~ plenty

My goal is images of who we really are; or at times of emotions produced in us. Sometimes my paintings expose nakedness rather than cover it up. They can be like a mirror and change according to who is viewing them.