Some of these landscapes were made to function as wall pieces. In this display the tension between horizontal and vertical line assumes a far greater importance than the landscapes presented as objects floating on a pedestal ninety degrees to ground level. The viewer is confronted with the matrix of the design head on and the tension between horizontal and vertical becomes more visually distinct. At this point in the development I began experimenting with showing a predominance of either vertical or horizontal shapes. This fascinated me as I remembered from my stone studies the two essential ways to present a stone: as a standing upright stone or as a reclining resting stone. The philosophy is that there are two essential ways of being. Upright or prone. The Eastern philosophies are extremely esoteric and complicated on this subject, they involve life and death, yin and yang, action verses non action and so forth. This dynamic became central to my design and over time I would create bas-relief works which were sometimes composed of solely horizontal or vertical pieces of wood. And as these works began to assume an organic attitude by the ever increasing selection of rougher pieces of wood a metaphor for the natural world worked it’s way into my designs once again. Seeing these works as tapestries, the transformation of the language to painting became a deceptively simple challenge; the idioms could not merely be flattened but required expression through the craft and technique of painting; the paintings would have to stand alone. I began making paintings during the stone carving period as a means of realizing a finished product faster than it took to create a carving. The labors of carving are severe and it takes months to finish a work. Painting and particularly India ink brush painting served as a contrapuntal discipline to sculpture as it’s very nature as liquid is an antitheses to the hardness of stone or the dust and debris of woodworking. The tactile experiences of watching fiber absorb ink or pigment in solution work it’s way across a picture plane are soothing and compared to making sculpture they are pleasant events.

1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   10   11