Artist’s Statment

Clear Light Sky Mind – These are the lodestars of my visionary symbolic abstracts 

First, an image-idea emerges from deep consciousness like an ocean wave. 
Then, velvety chalk pastels; elastic and texturizing acrylic media; transformational tilaka powder; and pinging palette knives lead the idea to . . . who knows where?
Along the way, inspirations from water, earth, fire, smoke, rock, ice, dark walls, bright glass, retinal images.
My passion is the interplay of matter, energy, mind and spirit. My abstracts stand in the lineage of abstract symbolism; not quite mythical, not quite kitsch – the rhythms, patterns and dynamics of elemental forces play yoga with awareness.

Who is the artist, who is the model?

Please let me identify with the model, merge with the model, be the model.
Please let the model express their true self.
Please let me capture their expression, observed or imagined.
Please let my hand be guided by the truth of our merger.

A short history
I’ve played with pencils and pens for as long as I can remember.
In 1967 I helped form the experimental Magic Theatre in Berkeley as actor and poster artist.
Years of occasional experimentation with a color photocopier and then computers followed.
Several years ago I started making time, while there’s still time, to express by hand on paper and canvas what appears in my mind’s eye. Ah, the hand! 70,000 years – maybe even 700,000!
Yes, I can be viewed as a privileged old white guy. Perceptions deceive. Everything we perceive is illusory, figments of our minds. The question is, how far past our limited perceptions can we go?

“I only wait to hear his call, flinging quickly outward, Enfolding me night and day. And earth between my singing lips.”
-Richard Middleton

“Since things neither exist nor don’t exist, are neither real nor unreal, are utterly beyond adopting and rejecting, one might as well burst out laughing.”
-Longchenpa