What I Did Not Include

Earlier today I finished an artist statement for my upcoming February 2023 Exhibition, Abstracted Directions. I’m not sure how many artists statements I have made in the last 40 years, and I don’t really want to count or even know. I do know that they are demanding and take considerable time and care in writing, and I know they are important.

The one I just finished, will be published here in this blog series. It is an encapsulation of what, where, how, and why I have been painting for 40 years. As you will read, if you care to on this other blog entry, I felt compelled to give my viewers a full background introduction to this 2023 show. Doing so gives a much deeper understanding of how I had developed and where I had came from. Even though I have lived in this town, Yucca Valley, California, now for, hard to believe it myself, 23 years, I am pretty sure most people don’t know my full story. This is a long way to say that the very condensed first 20 years of my art development, was streamlined into two short paragraphs in my own written voice. I may never do so well again, and I am inclined to never again try.

After the two introductory paragraphs, I switched to what new abstracted direction approaches I am currently trying. I mentioned all the new bodies of work I have initiated in the last few years. Four to be exact. Military battlegrounds. Scientific diagrams. Stock market charts. And music abstractions. Only the first and the last subjects of the four got a further short paragraph. The statement was already too long. It makes sense, people have limited time and patience. They can’t read everything, and don’t need to know all about every aspect of what you are doing, especially before they have even looked around the exhibition. Anyway, since I said nothing of substance about the stock charts nor the scientific diagrams, I have decided to correct this by now adding the two blog entries that will follow.

And you won’t have to read them on the wall if you come to the exhibition. My strategy is to put in my own writing what I want to say about the work I make and think about every day. It has taken me all these years to realize I am clearly the one that knows best what I am trying to do. If you you are curious about my paintings that depict stock charts and therefore the stock market or my attempts to visualize scientific understanding please continue with the blog entries in this series. I promise to be as to the point as possible.