NEGENTROPIC ASSEMBLAGES OF NATURAL SCULPTURES

STANDING NEAR WAVES

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                                                                                                                                                      PENGUIN ISLE

HANGRY

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SANCTUARY

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BEFORE THE ALTAR

ANGLERFISH

FLORAL FOREARM

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SPROUTFUL

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PACHYDERM

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OUTTASEA TURTLE

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AVIARY

LOCKED NESS

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PUGILISTIC

SEEKING NECTAR

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BIRD IN A BUSH

BANGELED

NESTING

SWERVE

WATCHING A KILL

SILK SCREEN AND ACRYLICS

MIXED MEDIA, SILKSCREEN AND ACRYLICS ON UNSTRETCHED CANVAS. A QUADTYCH OF PAINTINGS 11"X17"

SAMURAI HOMESTEADER LEADING GOATS AND GRANDKIDS

MENSCH TRACHT UND GOTT LAFT (Man plans and God laughs)
acrylic on canvas, 20"x60"x2"

This painting's beginning was a departure in technique for me. Blues, greens and black were released on canvas through mixtures in pouring gels. After further overlay with reds in modeling paste and copper paint both brushed and poured the figures of 'mensch' and a hand of divinely controlled fate emerged to echo the Yiddish proverb.

ACCEPTED FOR JURIED EXHIIBIT OF ABSTRACT ART TO BE SHOWN MARCH 2020 AT 311 W. MARTIN GALLERY, RALEIGH.

acrylic on 140lb press paper, 9"x12", Two recent paintings created plein aire on a spring day in January

THE PORTER

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ARMS UP

FOOD FIGHT
30"x 40" x 2" acrylic.
Painted plein air in Dix Park, Raleigh one of my earliest experiments with modeling paste that became two birds diving after a fish. Art meant to be touched and viewed.

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OUR SPIRITS MIGRATE
acrylic on stretched canvas, diptych, 18"x48". Created in 2019. Inspired by visit to the southwest and viewing the pictographs and sites holy to the Ancient Pueblo culture. The short poem refers to: the spiral of a people's migration; the hand prints that are portals in sacred rocks for the shaman to access the spirits and ancestors; Kokapelli, the flute playing trickster spirit who sometimes brought rain or grief; aleph-naught a mathematical term designating the first and smallest set of infinity. The poetry+art=PoArtry from the Art of Negentropy.

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WATER DOG WALK
Acrylic on stretch canvas, 18"x24"2".

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PALEO ARCHER Acrylic on canvas; Created 2015; Size: 30″ x 30″ x 2″; List Exhibited “Split Infinity Tour 2015” Raleigh NC Black and orange aligned to form this gestural illustration inspired by cave paintings I saw in Andalucía Spain. Pentimento (an after image of what’s underneath) is at play in this painting. The archer was painted over an overwrought work from a series I created on numbers as symbols. For me, an appealing resolution of simple over complex.

ARGONAUTS OF A MODERN AGE Acrylic on canvas; Created 2011-12; Size: 30″ x 30″ x 2″; Listed Palette slash of indigo on light blue began this undersea view of fish exploring a golden wreck.

DESERT SUNSET Acrylic on canvas; Created 2012; Size: 30″ x 40″ 2″. Exhibited: Art of Negentropy 2012 - Margaux’s, Raleigh NC. This textural piece begs to be touched (with clean hands please). This imagined dessert scene was initiated with a swarm of indigo embedded in Indian yellow employing a palette knife and rag sgraffito to horses, rider and desert brush. I’m unsure whether the swirl of spirits beneath sands and cacti or the wind from the west that lifts the horseman’s cape toward the mesa in the distance. The artist’s wife calls the figure “The Marlboro Man”.

DIALOGUE Diptych. Acrylic on canvas board mounted; Created 2011; Size (with black frame): 17″ x 25″; Exhibited: Art of Negentropy – Margaux’s 2012, Zely & Ritz 2012 After pressing two canvases together wet with dilute acrylics a man and woman found themselves face to face. Yet in the silence between them I heard a dialogue of sorts.

MEMBRANE Acrylic on canvas; Created 2011; Size: 30″x 30″ x 1.5″Exhibited: Art of Negentropy2012- Margaux’s Raleigh NC, Split Infinity Tour -2015Zely & Ritz, Raleigh NC. What began as an experiment with light blue and red became a study of how Dali might view the microscopic complexity of a cell membrane.

VIOLET RAPTOR (SOLD) Acrylic on canvas; Created 2014; Size: 18″ x 24″ x 2″; Exhibited: Split Infinity Tour- Lux Salon 2015. Here an egg came before the violet hen later carved with cerulean blue feathers on a quinacrine orange body. The peaceful repose of mother hawk belies her ‘viole(n)t’ nature.

ZEPHYR & BOREAS Acrylic on canvas; Created 2014; Diptych 34″ x 20″ x 1.5″; Exhibited: Split Infinity Tour -Margaux’s 2014, Lux Salon 2015 Following swipes of Australian violet embedded in scatters of yellow and orange, the wind gods Zephyr from the west and Boreas from the north arise and link their tempest organically.

ROMULUS AND REMUS GETTING MOM’S FIRE IN THEIR BELLIES Acrylic on canvas; Created 2013; Size: 24″ x 30″ x 1.5″; Exhibited: Split Infinity Tour- Margaux’s 2014, Lux Salon 2015. Following swirls of blues and red a beast came into existence. Inspired by the myth of Rome’s founders, I drew gestural illustrations of Romulus and Remus firing up their inner warrior as they suckle from the she-wolf who saved them.

SUNSET, HAWTHORNE WOODS (SOLD) Acrylic on canvas; Created 2014; Size: 24″ x 24″ x 1.5″; Exhibited: Split Infinity Tour- Margaux’s 2014, Lux Salon 2015, ArtWithin Last available of a series of three paintings, inspired by the view from my back porch.

CONTRAILS OVER ASPHAULT Mixed Media: acrylic and collage on canvas; Created in 2014; Size: 24″ x 36″ x 1.5″; Exhibited: Split Infinity Tour 2014- 2015. Margaux’s and Lux Salon Gray and yellow musing are brought together by tree trunk like images that are enlarged photos of a tar strip laid asphalt to repair a neighborhood street. A helical pour of textured pumice soaked in bismuth yellow evokes clouds or contrails of DNA stoking vis vitae (vital life force) around the inanimate grayness.

SUNSET PASTA Acrylic canvas; Created: 2013; Size: 24″ x 24″ x 1.5″; Exhibited: Split Infinity Tour 2014-2015 Margaux’s and Lux Salon, Raleigh NC. A work inspired by viewing Matisse paintings in the collection of the Coen Sisters at the Nasher Museum of Art in Durham, NC. This painting that borrows on Matisse’s fauvism (“wild beast”) such as the purple pasta. It is among my most textured paintings where I attempted to sculpt with the acrylics. A painting created to brighten a kitchen, as it has in the artist’s home, and meant to be touched with clean hands.

ELECTRIC SNAIL Acrylic on canvas; Created 2014; Size: 30″ x 30″ x 1.5″; Exhibited: Split Infinity Tour 2014-2015 Margaux’s and Lux Salon, Raleigh NC. Inspired by a picture of a tropical snail that was a 2013 Nature Photo of the Year sent to the artist by a poet in Chapel Hill, NC David Lieberman. Two of my paintings are published in a book of his poetry “Simulacra”.

FAMILIA DE LA FINCA (FARM FAMILY) Acrylic on handmade paper from a Central American women’s cooperative. Quadtych created 2013; Size (framed/mounted): 48.5″ x 17.5″; Exhibited: Split Infinity Tour- Margaux’s 2014 Earth tones painted on the background of patterned and textured paper made from rags and natural fibers. Patterns emerged, a man casting seed or tugging a tool, a horse, a seated figure (praying?), a mother and child. The title created itself. This painting was hung in the artist’s bedroom.

THE PHYSICS OF A CURVE BALL Acrylic on canvas; Created: 2014; Size: 25″ x 37″ (framed); Exhibited: Split Infinity Tour- Lux Salon 2015 Beginning with an orange ball played upon by cerulean blue streaks, the 5 overlaid angular pillars of Phthalo green became fingers of a hand. Movement of an orb and the artist’s immersion in physics and Chicago Cubs baseball threw this painting together.

RAINING SOULS BEHIND THE RECLINING BUDDHA Acrylic on canvas; Created 2011; Size: 30″ x 40″ x 2″; Exhibited: Art of Negentropy- Margaux’s 2012 and Split Infinity Tour- Margaux’s 2014 My sight was forever changed amidst the Bangkok Buddhist Temples where my retinas burned with ecstatic colors. This painting was inspired by a visit to Bangkok and the Temple of the Reclining Golden Buddha. In the large temple hall, the clanging of coin offerings in metal pots has a lofty sound. Behind the reclining giant golden figure are the brass pots where offerings of coins are dropped. The diminishing perspective of the brass pots where the offerings were made stuck with me and the painting was built around that image.

WITH OPEN ARMS SHE GREETS YOU Acrylic on canvas; Created 2011; Size: 30″ x 40″ x 2″; Exhibited: Art of Negentropy 2012- Margaux’s, Raleigh NC; Art of Negentropy Redux 2012, Zely & Ritz, Raleigh NC; Split Infinity Tour 2014-2015; New World Café, Raleigh NC. Last available of 3 from my “stained glass” series. Poised glowing among cooler hues and laying behind a black drape, she raises her arms and greets the viewer. But, naturally there are other things you see that the artist does not.

STILL LIFE IN A RAINY BRAIN Acrylic on Paper; Created 2013; Size: 31″ x 37″ (Mounted Framed); Exhibited: Split Infinity Tour-Art of Negentropy 2014-2015 at Margaux’s. Imagining blues and reds I was stirred by a viewing of Matisse from the Coen sisters collection , Raleigh at the Nasher Museum in Durham, NC. The flat perspective and melting white vase displaying a fantasy bouquet offsets the moody view outside and was hung in the artist’s home office.

ADAM STRUMS THE CORE OF SOUND Diptych. Acrylic on Canvas Board/ Mounted and Framed Size: 31″ x 31″; List Price: $350; Minimum Bid $100 (+35%). Swirls of ocean blue and earth tones imbued the flamenco sounds of the artist’s nephew Adam who busked in the streets of Grenada Spain. A pthalo green hand and strings emerged revealing the canto jondo (deep song) at the core of flamenco blues.

THE GOLEM SLEEPS Acrylic on Canvas; Created 2011-2013; SizExhibited: Art of Negentropy 2014, Margaux’s Raleigh. Australian violet melding with light blue and Indian yellow conjured up the mythical monster made of clay and brought to life and only deactivated when EMET (Hebrew:truth) is erased from its forehead. Inspired by visiting the house in Prague where a 16th century rabbit brought the golem to life. The monster asleep almost looks cuddly and deceptively warm.

UNDER THE WINTER HORNBEAM Acrylic on Canvas; Created 2012; Size 36″ x 48″ x 2″; Exhibited: Art of Negentropy 2014, Margaux’s, Raleigh NC. Australian violet and pthalo green paint was laid on canvas outdoors surrounded by the ghostly pale hornbeam trees clinging to their leaves in winter. In the mild North Carolina winter Matisse loaned this dreamscape a figure of a woman reposed. This work was hung in the artist’s home.

SLICING THE SALAMI Acrylic on Canvas; Size: 30″ x 30″ x 1.5″; Date Painted: 2014-15; Exhibited: Split Infinity Tour 2015 Lux Salon, Raleigh. The head and right arm were salvaged from an experiment in orange and purple. The red circles became salami once the copper knife was found in the hand.

GOALIE Acrylic on canvas; Size: 18″x24″x1.5″; Date Painted: 2014. Blues converged on canvas in Raleigh NC, a hockey town. A figure of a goalie on one knee negentropicaly emerged.

BULL EYES Diptych, Mixed Media: acrylic and collage; Size: Full Display: 55″x40″x1.5″ (individually 24″x24″ + 30″x40″); Date Painted: 2014; Australian violet on gray begat a bull inspired by the Spanish motif in the artist’s bedroom where this piece was displayed. But only after the pthalo green human eyes from a prior drawing were collaged did the shape of the auroch-like beast evolve.

FISH STEW BY CANDLELIGHT Acrylic on canvas; Size: 38″x48″x2.5″; Date Painted: 2012-2014. List Price: $2500, Minimum bid $750 (+35%). Exhibited: Split Infinity Tour 2014, Margaux’s, Raleigh NC. Begun first as a failed study of an urban landscape, the artist’s mentor, Eric McRay suggested a light wash to coat the painting. A mad slash and burn of structure and concept evolved and voila a meal by candlelight. Painting was displayed in the artist’s bedroom.

HIDING FROM RAIN (SOLD) Acrylic on canvas. 24x36x2. Created:201. Initially conceived as interplay of Indian Yellow and violet, a fauna evolved under maroon sky and streaks of rain.

MOVING BETWEEN HORIZONS Acrylic on canvas; Size: 30″ x 40″ x 2″; Created 2011; Exhibited: Split Infinity Tour- Margaux’s 2014; Pthalo green and Australian Violet horizons were laid and a grey figure emerged between.

PHASED OUT Mixed Media: Acrylic and collage; Created 2010; Size: 20x20; Painted in the studio of Eric McRay of ArtSpace, Raleigh, the work is an attempt to marry the geometric with the amorphous in a movement through time.

DUSK HIDEAWAY Acrylic on canvas; Created 2011-12; Size: 36″ x 48″ x 3″; Exhibited: Art of Negentropy- Margaux’s 2012, Zely & Ritz 2012. Begun in a workshop run by Jane Filer on Emerald Island NC a continuation of an experiment with pthalo green and Australian red violet. That groundwork became a forest floor and a nest of sorts for a indigo nude hidden in repose.

MAN ON FIRE Acrylic on paper/mounted and framed; Size: 22″ x 30″; Created 2011; Exhibited: Art of Negentropy, Margaux’s Raleigh NC 2012.

ANGRY VENUS Acrylic on Canvas; Sizes 30x30x2; Created 2011; Not common for me to use primary colors but slashes of yellow drew me in. The symbol of Venus’s Mirror evolved unconsciously in the creation of this work.

JUNGLE STROLL Acrylic on canvas; 30x40x2; Created 2013. Pthalo green and Indian yellow merge on the floor of a tropical rain forest with fantasy flora.

DARK ENERGY Acrylic on canvas; 30x40x2.5; Created 2012. Red on black was the initial color conception. Chaos appears to overcome negentropy.

ANASAZI HUGS Acrylic on canvas; 20x16x2;Created 2015; Inspired by petroglyphs of ancient civilizations in the Southwest.

WHEN INFINITY SPLITS Acrylic on canvas; 30x40x2 ; Created 2017 Textured white with a Twombly inspiration of lines.

WHITE BOARD ATTRIBUTED TO HOMO EVOLUTUS CIRCA 13.8 BILLION+2000 YEARS Acrylic on canvas; 30x40x2 ; Created 2017 The title says it all. Caricature of Albert’s face on the side at the bottom of painting. The equations are fabricated and the diagrams are riffs of Feynman Diagrams that he composed for explaining Quantum Electrodynamics that won him the Nobel Prize in physics.

EMERGING CAMOUFLAGED Acrylic on canvas; 30x40x2; Created 2012-14; This piece began as an experiment of Indian yellow, Australian red violet and pthalo green during a workshop by Chapel Hill NC artist Jane Filer. A green a cat-like creature emerged from the flora and refused to meld in.

UPSTREAM MONOLOGUE Acrylic on Canvas; Created 2011-2015; Size: 36″ x 48″ x 3.One of my larger paintings, the work began with a wave of red hair and the indigo back of a woman. Around her I squirted and knifed a field of paint around her and including a river banked by a tree of gold fruit and a sturdy bridge to run under. The tree bark is an sgraffito swirl of violet that matches the bridge nearby, both carved by different pallet knifes in the wet dark purple underpinned by magenta. I can’t determine whether she plans to swim or immerse herself otherwise. Her secrets are swallowed by the rush of a river where her memories flow.

CAROLINA BEACH SWIM

KETZELEH

NEOLITHIC SPRING DANCE Acrylic Canvas, Created: 2011, Size: 30″ x 30″ x 1.5″, Exhibited at a juried exhibit “Spring Forward” Tipping Paint Gallery at 311 Martin Galleries, Raleigh 2016. One of a series of pieces inspired by cave art. The gestural illustrations of dancing figures negentropicaly emerged when cave walls formed around a frenzy of color.

GUITARMAN

PROTON EXPLODED

BIOLUMINECENSE

FACETIME

DUNED

FIREPOT

HARVEST

NIGHTSCAPE

PLAYING LYRE

ATLAS SHRUGGED AND GAIA SWALLOWED HIM

HAIKU

PRIMARY COLORS 1

Acrylic on canvas; Created 2014; Size: 30″ x 40″ x 2. Beginning with an sgraffito treatment of freshly laid Australian red one of my aviary creations was hatched from the chaos of unknowing to known.

Acrylic on canvas; Created 2014-2015; Size: 30″ x 40″ x 2. Initially conceived as black on green botanical dream of a tropical rainforest that was inspired by a recent visit to Costa Rica, I conjured the ghost of a monkey who stole my fruit from a poolside bar. Rum was involved.

ALIENS AMONG US Acrylic on Canvas; 30x40x2; Created 2015; Inspired by the artist’s daughter’s trip to the NC Aquarium near Wilmington NC. In the style of sgraffitio the wet deep purple was worked with palette knives to create jelly fish-like creatures.

ROOSTER RAPTOR acrylic on canvas; created: 2016; Size:30″x 40″; Inspired by the ferocity and savagery of a farmyard descendent of dinosaurs, this piece was created for a juried exhibit EGGSELSTENTIALISM 3.0 and was exhibited at 311 Martin Galleries, Raleigh 2016.

A DREAM CATCHER CAUGHT ME SWIMMING

Acrylic on canvas, Created 2012, Size: 24″ x 24″ x3″, Preconceived as a combination of alizarin red and pinks, sgraffito was applied with a variety of palette knife edges scraping the wet alizarin coating on the bed of dry pinks. A cat-like creature evolved (as we all do) in fluctuations of quantum fields.

Mixed Media: Acrylic and Hornbeam leaf; Created 2013; Size: 30″ x 30″ x 2″; While running in the woods that surround my home, I caught a leaf as it fell. Not allowing it to touch the ground reminded me of religious traditions that don’t allow sacrosanct items to touch dirt. As I painted in rhythms and color of autumn, the seated girl revealed herself. I placed the holy leaf in her hand.

Acrylic on canvas; Created 2015; Size: 30″ x 40″ x 2″; Envisioned as black, copper and quinacrine orange mélange the bottom of oceanic trenches far from light created itself. Here is primordial life flourishing under extreme conditions, thriving negentropicaly, as a process of organic order creates creatures thriving around the thermal vents at the bottom of the sea.

Healing a Mind from Fear Acrylic 18x24x2. created 2014. Hamsa, protector from the evil eye, makes a cosmic connection to the fearful mind to heal and soothe.

BOTANICAL CUPPA

BOTANICAL CUPPA

A TURN OF HEART

SWEETGUM EXPLOSION

RIVERSIDE
Acrylic on stretched canvas. Diptypch. 24"x36"

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RAIN RUNNER.
4ft x 6ft. Mixed Media. Acrylic on unstretched canvas with a frame of gold on black ribbon stitched on canvas.

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TARGETING HATE, FEAR AND IGNORANCE- (composite of 9, 18x24; mixed media- acrylics, collage, gunpowder and lead).

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Composing "Targeting Hate, Fear and Ignorance in the woods next to a friends house in Duke Forest near Chapel Hill. A violent approach  addressing the sources of violence. Uncomfortable making this piece. A notable departure from my style. More to come.

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Tree Silhouette Series

16"x20" acrylics