The New Territory

Some thoughts on my approach to Abstract Art.

Post Dogmatist Painting #1191 - acrylic over paper on canvas - 72 x 108 inches

While much of my work falls under the general term of geometric abstraction I can’t say that I think in mathematical terms at all. Early on in my artistic career I developed a strong interest in abstract or non-objective art. I continue to study other earlier artists’ works starting with the Cubists and working my way through the 20th century along the geometric trajectory (as compared to other branches). I think of myself primarily as working out in leisure what earlier artists proposed in haste during their hunt for the “New Territory.” I see the last 100 years as an ongoing experimental laboratory with thousands of artists working in tandem to flesh out this new territory of which I am one. Hence most of my work stays on task, testing out various ideas and ways of constructing and expressing those ideas.

In my recent body of work with typographic abstraction it is perfectly natural that these works fall under the general term of geometric abstraction since typography is nothing if not geometric in design. My work is to break down the letters into non-recognizable configurations so that the geometric structures may be revealed. Language is perhaps the last vestige of representational-ism that abstraction has worked in counterpoint to. When we read words we barely even see the actual letters or forms of the language, but look through to the meaning represented by the clusters of letters. This is the tension that I am working on in my work in this series—to bring the mind back to the forms, to a primordial place before words took form.