Top of the Ridge, Bear's Den
oil on canvas 34" x 48"
June Day, Near The Appalachian Trail
oil on canvas 34" x 28"
"The image is more than an idea. It is a vortex or cluster of fused ideas and is endowed with energy." Ezra Pound
"Painting is the passage from the chaos of the emotions to the order of the possible."
Balthus
I would often tell students that they were engaged in advanced physics when making paintings. Those who were with me for the first year would give a look like, "what in the world is this guy saying?" Considering Ezra Pound's quote above and it begins to make sense. Painting, at its best, is a representation of a fleeting moment, distilled from a compression of hours of work - powered by a "cluster of fused ideas", dealing primarily with light energy as it bounces around and off of solid mass. The incredible thing is that all this complex process is set in motion by our humanity - our imagination, our recognition, our experience. This is, to my thinking, where art exceeds physics, in that it takes abstract ideas like time, space, form, energy - and brings them back within our capability to understand, to experience empathy and to connect with each other in our common life experience. Quite a wondrous occupation, wouldn't you agree?
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