091the physical elements of a composition PREVIEW
to find his or her own story. He says,
“I want my paintings to be neutral enough,
open enough, that others can have an
interpretation.”
He explains that he doesn’t always “have
a concept. It comes to me piece by piece.
I may put an idea on the back burner
and another idea will appear that works
with the initial idea to make something
different. I can be working on a painting
and I’ll come across something that will
send it in a different direction. Sometimes,”
he continues, “in the process of formalproblem-solving I may decide the painting
needs an added element compositionally
and the story will change again.”
His painting Bunker brings to mind
the paintings of the 19th-century English
Pre-Raphaelite painters known for their
scientific veracity and abundance of fine
detail. The occasion of the painting was
his discovery of World War II bunkers in
northern Italy, now poignantly overgrown
with vegetation. The figure, exposed and
vulnerable atop the bunker, is threatened
by a lowering sky, which he describes as
having “an oppressive weight.”
He recalls a conversation with F. Scott
Hess who advised him that a merely
“clever” painting isn’t going to hold
anyone’s interest for long. Multiple
layers reveal themselves over time. He
says, “I began to think of paintings as an
expression of the unconscious, or that they
can be objects of meditation, speculation
and much more.”
His paintings can be “the lighting of
a fire.”3
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