Artist Statement 2022

I received an MFA from University of Chicago in 1983, went to Asia for most of the 1980’s, worked and raised a family during the 1990’s and 2000’s, and was finally able to refocus part of my time after 2010 on making art. I started by drawing and painting views from my sailboat, composing images that convey the feeling of being knocked about on deck as the boat heels in the wind. The more I did this, the more interested I became in the water itself and the waves that were adding to the tumult. I dispensed with the boat and jumped overboard, drawing and painting waves crashing on shore or into each other. I spent much of this time on the east end of Long Island near where I grew up and where Caro, my wife, was living when we met. In 2018 we moved to Rhinebeck NY and my artistic attention shifted to the Hudson River. Increasingly I came under its spell, learning about its long geological history and powerful impact on early and contemporary America. 

In my various readings about climate, weather and nature, I happened on a biography of Alexander von Humboldt, entitled The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wulf. Humboldt set the stage 200 years ago for our current understanding of nature as an interconnected global force that does not exist for the use of humankind alone. In the second volume of Cosmos, his magnus opus: 

“…he focuses on an inner world – on the impressions that the external world produces on the feelings…. The eye, Humboldt wrote, is the organ of ‘Weltenschauung’, the organ through which we view the world but also through which we interpret, understand and define it.”

We often refer to Rivers and Waves and Trees in our language when describing human experience and emotion: Expectation, disappointment and surprise at what’s around the bend, downstream; how difficult it is to reverse course and head back to the source. Life is lived in the river, not just observing from the shore…. 

As the river reaches the sea, it becomes part of a seemingly infinite ocean of time and space. But then the water evaporates and joins the atmosphere as clouds that drop rain and snow back to the earth. In an endless cycle, it finds its way to mountain streams that feed back into the river again.

It seems that as part of nature, humans use her as a way to deepen our self-awareness and connectedness to each other. These images try to speak to that visually.