This is where I live (digital photograph).

This is what I paint (cropped and enlarged from the photograph above).

This is a typical result (not based directly on any photograph; I don’t even own a camera).

My paintings, while they may appear realistic to some people and in certain contexts , are actually highly abstracted. This can be sen very clearly when they are viewed side-by side with a photograph of the same subject matter.

I use the patterns and colors in the sky near the horizon and on the surface of the water to derive a plastic vocabulary with which to express myself as a painter.

The current May 17, 2008 U. S. Senate version of the “Orphan Works” legislation is a nightmare for artists.

Every country in the world currently recognizes an artist’s rights to their own work, with or without a formal copyright; all you need to do in the case of a dispute is prove that you did it first.

Leave it to the Legislative Branch of the USA Federal Government to attempt to pass a law requiring an artist to pay a fee to a Corporation in order to own something that already belongs to them!

Can you imagine the revenue at $5 a pop? It boggles the mind. King George never had it so good.

This is something that every artist in the USA must take action against. Read about it here and here

Here’s a draft of a letter concerned artists can send to their U.S. Senators…

Bertrand Russell described love as a condition of ‘absolute value’, as opposed to ‘relative value’.

Love recognizes a state of truth distinct from, and opposite to, the idea that there is a difference between the subject and the object. It is sometimes called ‘pantheism’.

Love is reality itself, of which we incorrectly perceive ourselves as an isolated part.

“At the deepest level of our being – the divinity within that we share with all beings – there is no separation between me and you. At any moment it is possible to experience the warmth and openness of a heart connection with any living creature: a lover, a child, a friend, a stranger passing on the street, or even a dog. When we appreciate the beauty of another’s being, the…

Let’s try to imagine the City Without Art.

At work,You can turn on the radio, but there’s no music. Music doesn’t exist. Just talk: news, opinion, advertising, propaganda…

At the end of your working day, you can’t go to the theatre, or the opera, or a concert, or the movies; they don’t exist. You can’t go home and get comfortable with a good book; there are no novels, no short stories, no poetry. None of these things exist.

You can go to a restaurant, but remember, the culinary arts don’t exist.

You can turn on the TV, but there are no movies, no comedies, no dramas. Just more talk talk talk and advertising. But even the ads have no element of art or music. They are not entertaining in any way.

You can read, maybe, the biography of a politic…

*The whole notion of intent is one that fascinates me almost to the point of obsession; when looking at or making artwork I always wonder, what is the artist’s intent for this thing that they are making?; what effect, exactly, is it supposed by the artist to have on others?… what effect does making it have on the artist?… and so on.

This question of intentionality is strangely absent from most of what is considered to be critical thinking about Art. Probably the various art objects could even be meaningfully classified according to the various intentions and effects, but somehow this is never done.

It can be quite enlightening to try and arrive at a more specific sort of clarity about what our intentions for, and suppositions about, the specific things that we create act…