Whether I am painting representational pictures or something purely abstract, I want the work to be provocative and stimulating. The surface should be tactile, and active enough to pull the viewer close, like a magnet.
When I paint images my need to understand who I am as a person and the dynamics of the world around me is revealed in some expressive manner.
When my work is abstract, I enter a subconscious world. Where expressive movement and color guide each gesture and shape the work to completion. Here the work is more sublime. Its essence seems to be captured from an endless sea of electronic impulses.
My inspiration comes from diverse artistic styles as well as social and environmental conditions. I am fascinated by history, like the Ancient World with all its mysteries, the Italian Renaissance where so many great artists lived and worked so close to one another, and the Twentieth Century where many innovations and inventions have affected the way we live our lives.
What motivates me is a strong desire to create, to empathize with the world, and find the essence of that experience in some painterly vision.
"Gearilla Works" is a humorous, but enigmatic reference to a body of artwork I created that use gears, wires, or chains, as the main design element. They were inspired by the contemporary notion that a "Machine" is behind all that is, that a device or mechanism is turning our world, be it mythical, magical or simply implied. They are unveiling of that device.
They borrow from the Ancient World, and are somewhat inspired by the mysteries of the "Anti-ky-thera Mechanism", a complex gear mechanism of antiquity. Like that mechanism they lay in wait, waiting for us to discover their function. But they are devices without function, only cogs that perform for our amusement in an absurd world. They exist as if part of the Wizard of Oz's gift of a heart or brain, or part of a "Flat Worlder's" wonder of what lies at the edge of the universe.
They are part of an abomination as well. Like King Kong and Frankenstein, they remind us that man's spirit is kindled by a need to make discoveries at any expense, and make a monster out of something pure, as he digs into the subconscious realm to find the apparatus that lies in the dark recesses of his mind, at the edge of his dreams, and at the edge of night.
But they are after all just pictures at an exhibition.
