PAINTINGS | Dimensional

THE WATERGATE SERIES 1980-1985

The dimensional paintings created at this time are a graphic record of powerful, even violent, gesturally-vigorous dimensional shapes, vaguely and disturbingly organic, in a generally unarticulated field. Color is used sparingly as are touches of trompe l’oeil. Much of this work, in fact, is in black and white alone—a unity of opposites entirely appropriate to the elemental drives and energies suggested in these paintings. The large-scale of these pieces endow this art with grand and epic drama.

These works disclose a consistent and purposeful violation of the picture plane. The surface is cut, torn, ripped and sewn, and burnt with appendages of bundles covered and bound, suggesting something hastily wrapped for future disposal. These large works of art are a form of painting, collage, and relief and are dramatic and insistent. As the surface is assaulted, so is the sensibility of the viewer, generating a level of tension that might tempt one to respond to a series of monumental Rorschach images. It is a control that transcends the initial shock of sensational brutality to attain a stark and formal elegance that invites contemplation even as it induces anxiety.