THE STRING PAINTINGS 

The line has always been a constant element in my art.  With this new work, I use a string as the line and by soaking the string in paint before applying it to paper or canvas I can record its performance. 

I am amazed by the personality of the string as a tool for painting.  It enables me to express all of the emotion and force of a gesture as I throw it across the paper or canvas and let it drop in loops and meandering lines before throwing it again.  I can control the string, but only to a degree.  Its intrinsic properties are a strong element in the visual record of my actions. 

Sometimes the initial string gesture is enough to create a finished painting, but often I subtract or edit lines, sculpting spaces and clarifying forms.  It is a bit like pruning a plant.  The challenge is to take away all but the essential in order to strengthen the painting by reinforcing its content and personality.  

In this new work I refer to many images that are impressed on my mind, from veins, arteries and capillaries in The Bodies Show to galactic nebulae seen from the Hubble telescope.  I view this new work as both landscape and portrait and even as dance. With the string, calligraphy becomes choreography.  Sometimes when I look at my paintings I hear music - the other day I heard the low vibrations of a cello as I stared, trance-like, at one of my paintings.  With string and paint, I create modern and timeless forms, a universal vision, using a truly simple technique.

 

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