My intention is to continue evolving my contemporary abstract perspectives of the architectonic world that surrounds us as well as the orbiting colonies and cities of the future as prelude to the cityscapes that will inevitably arise on the other planets of our solar system.
Here in Los Angeles I am surrounded by everything that is unique and congruent with my vision. Several of my works such as” Pink Sun Over the City “, “Downtown Los Angeles Homeless Camp”, “The City of Angels” and “Architectonic Metamorphosis for the New Common Era“ are definite examples of inspiration that Los Angeles and other large cities can give.
In my paintings, I combine multiple points of perspective. This allows the viewer to observe the objects in the paintings from the top, sides and bottom at the same time. This makes for simultaneous views. “These unique colors, like the experience of finding them, are unrepeatable…”
-Dr. Jeanne Willette (Memory and Metonymy, June 2002, Los Angeles).
I’m interested in the association of architectural objects and the way these are viewed from memory. But not necessarily as the specific architectural objects per se. In my paintings, you have a feeling of recognizing specific objects, such as a window, room or street, but the more you look at them you realize they do not make actual sense. They don’t correspond to each other spatially and they are not depicted as distinct objects. Instead, they reinforce the idea of a quasi-rational, architectonic three-dimensional space. The dialogue between space and form and light and shadow have to be negotiated by the viewer.
After returning from a three month art residency in Japan in 2017, I resumed working on this project which was already one year in the making. At completion I had personally cut and painted 53 different sculptural pieces with some help in the final assembly by a woodworking assistant. These pieces can go together as one sculptural installation or, alternatively, each can also be a standalone work. My work represents an orbiting megatropolis losing gravity. As gravity diminishes, these architectural monoliths ascend and descend as they transform the capacity of space. The shapes induce a prismatic explosion of color from the inside out which ultimately reveals the magnetic feminine principle as seen throughout all cycles of life.
Further development of these concepts came after visiting SpaceX at one of their rocket facilities in Los Angeles. While standing under the powerful rocket engines built to overcome gravity, I was reminded that “the painting does not follow any physical law, it has no up or down, it is not ruled by gravity” according to Kazimir Malevich . Rockets carrying everything needed to put cities inside large domes orbiting the earth became a new and fresh conceptually challenging artistic endeavor.
From my “0.10 Angled Shape of Color as a Beacon in Space”, as a tribute to Russian poet and artist Maximilian Voloshin who wanted art to be a “shining beacon”, to my “Lightning Transformer “, I hear Malevich exhorting me to “…. go into the unknown wilderness … where real transformation can take place“, and Frank Stella who said that “a sculpture is just a painting, cut out and stood up somewhere”.
So I decided to take my work and send it up into unknown space, away from gravity! Sol LeWitt pointed out “once the rocket loses gravity, it is out of our control” referring to the artist who “has no control over the way the viewer will perceive the work”.
I have been asked if my work represents painting or sculpture. They are neither paintings nor sculptures. They are both. As both, they are neither. But the sum of the two results in a whole that is greater than the two components. This is an artistic transmutation from two knowns to one unknown. Then we have one unknown searching for definition; for a new conceptual frame of reference. PaSColor is the final and formal name for my new concept. This curious, if not idiosyncratic, neologism is a term I define as an integration— more accurately a bono fide transmutation!—of painting and sculpture through shape and color. The shape pulls the color from the inside out. These shapes are like prisms that bend, reflect, deflect, diminish, heighten, refract and absorb color in a myriad of dynamic vibratory movements. The color comes from the light and the color informs the shape which, in turn, pushes the color from the inside out. A discrete feature of PaSColor shows this by synergistically generating multiple layers of high intensity acrylic paint in a prismatic explosion of colors.
In this new work, PaSColor captures my concept of an orbiting monolithic megatropolis losing gravity while also featuring the universal phenomena of geometric waves, vibrant fields and optic frequencies.
For my descriptions I chose to view a select few of these regal monoliths from only one of multiple possible angles. With PaSColor, I discovered yet another feature that enables it to animate as well as enhance the emotionally valenced quality of particular memories set apart by this intensity. From an abundance of narratives that surfaced like vertical waves from the deep blue sea of my unconscious, I could, correspondingly, imagine countless dreamlike stories still faintly forming and fading while rising from the low frequency depths where mythic underwater civilizations once thrived. These so-called lost civilizations, out of the mysteries of their extinction, signal a warning for us not to fall prey to similar conditions lest we become a vast architectural dystopia.
I view the orbiting megatropolis as a mirror image of our earthbound civilization with its nearly unlimited architectural cityscape audacity, built by a species that has always wanted to reach the stars. Colonizing our solar system is no longer science fiction. This drive to do so is no doubt a primitive remnant of a basic imbalanced masculine imperative to conquer, dominate, control and ultimately destroy all things natural, bright and full of color. Or to restrain the Feminine as revealed in “The Indomitable Spirit of the Amazon”. Each piece of this megatropolis transmutes the Law of Polarity into a higher frequency of interconnectedness and gender equilibrium through the PaSColor. I envision the crushing gravity of despair left behind. And I see Hope, as it loses the pull of gravity, elevated to a gender balanced consciousness where we honor, develop, follow and amplify the light within each of us to pass through the prism. This will collectively inform the world that our own unique and brilliant array of color, perspective and quality can move forward with elegance in a vibrant new context of union and equality.
