Current Works 2022-23

California Light and Space to Irish Skies

My formative years as an artist on California’s southern coast affected me, as it did many artists of my generation. West Coast colors are crisp and bright, they glimmer in the blazing sun, and are accentuated by the industrial manufacturing materials and tools developed in this region. Art movements such as Light & Space, Finish Fetish, Minimal Art, and the particular version of costal and mountain Plein Aire painting are all native to Southern California. Inspired by the idea of exotic paint colors and alternatives to canvas, I explored metal and plastic surfaces in an effort to find a way to communicate my aesthetic vision. Architecture, in particular modernist architecture influenced my work, and photography as a source of documenting the architectural fragments worked their way into my collages. Placing contrasting or complimentary images in compositions, and on surfaces that juxtaposed the elements, suited my practice of art making. I eventually morphed some of these ideas into hybrid of compositions; a postmodern strategy of trying to make sense of the environment in which I lived and its quality of light. Being encircled by beaches and mountains heightened my awareness that nature was a source of richness and inspiration in my life.

Years of teaching in Europe allowed me to travel often to my ancestral homeland of Ireland. Ireland captured me from the moment I first arrived. Perhaps it was genetic memory, the feeling of finding my true home as all of my ancestors hail from the island. After decades of traveling as a visitor throughout Ireland, I obtained my Irish citizenship and purchased a home and studio in Rosscarbery, West Cork. To split my time between CA and West Cork is a blessing, and a deep source of inspiration for my artwork.

My recent task has been to grapple with how to pair my process of art making and its aesthetic with the influences of Ireland. The challenge is to consider the differing quality of light and the natural environment. The colors in Ireland are no less crisp and full, just different. The intensity of the sky, whether it is blue or gray, has a depth informed by the presence or absence of the sun. The greens, often poeticized, are many and varied. Can I say that the color in Ireland is more natural? It’s certainly more organic, less influenced by industry and architecture. This translates into using materials in my Irish studio that are more organic as well. Wood and stone are the elements that will feature in my process and practice. Working in both places means there is a dialogue not only between the environments and the lifestyles, but with the aesthetics of the cultures as well. To explore the layers of these relationships is a journey I approach with anticipation.

Recent Work 2019-2021

Late in 2019 I returned from Ireland and started a new group of artworks in the series I call “Baroque Minimalism.” These new works were a continuation of the eccentric shapes and fragmented vintage frames I had been working with for the past few years. I had more to say in this style, and I felt glad to have completed so many more pieces between fall and early winter.

My family and I travelled to Japan in February, and you will find a gallery of those photographs in my Photograph Gallery. Shortly after our return, the world was stopped by the onslaught of the COVID pandemic. Hunkering down in isolation is not always a bad thing for an artist, and I took the opportunity to work on some new ideas, thinking that surely the world would open up again by summer. That, of course, was not to be. Sadly. We’ve lost too many souls to this virus, and many lives have been upended drastically. I had plans to start the “Irish Suite” back in Ireland in my West Cork studio this summer, but the worldwide shutdown continued. I decided to work on the “Irish Suite” while stuck in California. California is not such a bad place to be stuck, but I do miss the cultural inspiration I get from the Irish soil, the people, and nature.

Earlier Works

Earlier works and my practice as an artist

Growing up and being schooled in Southern California left its mark on me. The particular types of minimal art that emerged here (Hard Edge, and California Light and Space) are the main influences on my aesthetic. Painting is at the core of what I do. I use the term minimalism to describe my work for lack of a better term. My preferred term would be reductive painting: a bare-boned formal approach to image making. I have a formally reductive sensibility that (in over 40 years of painting) has developed into a language of my own. This language has a particular color and compositional footprint. From the Cantos, which are mostly color field paintings, through my geometric abstractions and constructions, to the group of works I like to think of as baroque minimalism, I maintain a thread that is unmistakably mine.