Miscellaneous Paintings

The title of this work is a play on the name of a poem and a collection of poems by Charles Bukowski. His title is: It Catched My Heart In It's Hands. As is often the case with Bukowski's poems, there is an element of poignant tragedy drawn from the most quotidian images, or an observation of love found in the most unexpected experiences.

Being in the theatre my whole life and also running studios which serve as rehearsal studios and photo studios, I am often around fashion models. Their attitudes, the way they carry themselves has always struck me as having a certain relationship to gravity that is particular to them. I think that observation has influenced the content of this painting.

Sometimes I just start painting with a few stroke, without thinking about where it might go. I follow the painting and let guide me. It's a little more studied that my action paintings, or chance operation paintings. But nonetheless I let it speak to me as it unfolds.

This is one such painting in which I just keep painting and little by little the scene emerges. It's a kind of chance operation from the unconscious mind. Chance operation. It's way of creating art or writing used in many forms by the surrealists and then later by the Beats.

This started as an abstract painting and them I saw the accidental emergence of characters who comprise a mysteriou story, perhaps the beginning of a fable. .

Dogs apparently don't have language in the same way that humans do. We have a habit of attributing human traits to our pets. We speak to them. We speak about them as though they think about us. They certainly seem to have emotions. But who know what really goes on in animal minds. I don't think It's fair or true to assume that human mind is above, better, more "developed" etc than animal mind. There is a lot of speculation about this by animal lovers, not to mention scientific studies to try to determine what goes on in their minds if only they could communicate to us! Jane Goodall and her life with the apes comes to mind.

This is just a simple drawing painting of two Butoh performers. I felt that the minimalist brushstrokes gave just the right dynamic sense of what their performance felt like.

This painting and others like it in my work are done as "action paintings." Without thinking too much, I try to paint automatically and let my choices of color, stroke, placement etc be guided unconsciously It's an interesting experience and results in some very surprising aspects and images within the painting. It's not unusual to see faces, animals, objects appear out of the seeming chaos of the paint on the canvas. Some people see more than others. And it also depends on your disposition at any given moment. This phenomenon is called Pareidolia. I also became interested in Action Painting through my work as a musician and composer. I was familiar with the "chance operation" techniques of poets like Jackson Maclow, or composers like John Cage. They invented all kinds of techniques to let their creativity be guided by something not in their control. Like using a deck of cards for example, or cut-up techniques used by Brion Gysin and William Burroughs. As a musician I also accompanied the Japanese painter, Naoki Iwakawa on "open piano", improvising playing normally but also striking or plucking the strings with various tools and mallets, while Naoki painted on a large canvas. He would throw paint at the canvas, or ground pigment, often throwing himself on the canvas, etc. These wild dynamic actions he used to paint allowed him to draw on his unconscious rather than deliberately making choices. In this one there is a white horse's head with a very abstracted character with arms outstritched towards the horse. That's how I see it. I also see a landscape of mountains, with a lake at the top middle part of the landscape.

This is a portrait of the Greek God, Pan, who is worshipped to this day. Devotees will gather with musicians playing wild flutes and drums and work themselves into a frenzy dancing, until they can release and realize their animal spirit. They will often dance for hours, sometimes days, until exhausted. Sometimes dancing with goats and other animals.

I have walked in Central Park so many times. And so often I will come upon a scene or a character that just makes me stop and wonder. One comes upon the most unusual characters in New York City. This is the rendering of a guy I saw there standing a few feet away from a bench with a cat on it. He turned and smiled at me. It was hard to tell if it was a feral cat, or if it was his cat. But he gave me such a "knowing" smile that it kind of complete the mystery and allowed it to stay at that.