the task prescribed

"Anyone who looks with a pure spirit, with eyes not obfuscated by intellectual passion, could see in a part of nature the 'eternal norms' .... To such a one was evident the 'law according to which the rose and lily blossom', the animal 'type', the leaf, the slow transitions of metamorphosis, the providential memory of Biblical creation. These were the sublimest images that had ever populated the earth. Man must continue to shape, develop, and enrich them within himself, draw them in pictures and books, even if, around him, the elements unleashed their fury.

"The task prescribed for man was to overcome the violence and arbitrariness, sterility and absurdity that accompanied nature, making shine out everywhere the law of the rose and the lily, the perfection of metamorphosis, the harmonious sound of spheres." - Goethe, a biography by Pietro Citati


I work from nature quite a lot because of everything that it throws out at me. I enjoy the weird chaos, even if it's on a low level, of having to contend with the fact that something is in front of me. Which may mean ignoring it, as I sometimes do. Decision making is part of a painter's working process and there is a balance between trying to pack in everything that I can observe, on the one hand, and eliminating the extraneous - - - "what to leave in, what to leave out". These paintings are small and are not much more than note-taking, a kind of short-hand, and are only a step toward an enlarged, reworked, maybe altogether different painting hanging out there somewhere in the future.

Painting at home, I am guilty of being somewhat lazy and habit orientated. Working outdoors can be unpleasant and inconvenient, which is why I do it. It puts me on the spot and forces me to contend with arrangements, patterns, masses, colors, and all kinds of other things that won't come together for me that way when I'm at home and sitting in my chair. There is a whole elemental level that I can start to sink into as the minutes and the hours slip away. I come home afterwards with these little watercolors that I cannot anticipate in the morning.