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What can an
artist say after 50 years of being one? Well, it is work. It is
fascinating and interesting and involves
discipline and
dedication and all of that leads to endless possibilities. I started
off as a biochemistry major in college when by the third year, the
formulas on the blackboard became paintings. I lost focus unless I
transformed the laboratory to a studio where I began a journey to another
kind of exploring.

The essence of it all was and still is
a motivating factor. How, then, to proceed, especially during the early
1960's in the aftermath of the abstract expressionists? I started with a
backbone of a chicken and then proceeded to use the cube as a fundament
form of essence. To succeed, I needed to study all the Masters of
the Renaissance Period through the Impressionist and beyond. Paul
Cezanne as the structuralist par excellence along with Van Gogh and
Matisse for their color supremacy and Paul Klee for his wit and humor were
major influences. That was not
enough. There was and still is the need to gain a grasp of form
which led to thousands of drawings of rocks, old machine parts and,
finally, the human face with its variety of expression and mood.
It has been a long
trial-and-error process with long gaps in my work as I wandered throughout
the nation. I covered almost every state, testing the realities.
Amazingly I have managed not to physically lose my work by finding storage
spaces here and there. A few years ago, a place
of my own.
Life can begin at 72
years old. Frank Lloyd Wright said he began his best year at 82
years old. Matisse would say the same thing. Monet, too.
There is the crystalization to be conveyed...
For me art is a
serious process... there is a lot of work involved. I approach the
paper, the canvas, the notebook as an adventure, ready for the unexpected
and at the same time, through daily discipline, forge a content. If
well thought out it becomes a base of a new kind of evaluation. This
becomes a means of exploration into the essence of time and space
utilizing geometry, color and direction. Eventually after forty
years of effort there comes an elevation which releases a whole new set of
possibilities. The realization of those possibilities can be
expressed with a set of large works.
I use art, also, to express humor
resulting in over 4,000 human drawings and cartoons which I divided into
book form. These volumes of 100-300 pages show the variableness of
human relations and are divided into the following themes: Robots, State
of Mind, Hats, Chairs, Hair Style, Auto and Human Shapes. |