Visions of the Deluge
I’m excited to announce that I’ve been invited to join Blackfish Gallery as a member-owner. Blackfish is among the oldest continually operating collective art galleries in America, and has been a cornerstone of the Portland art scene for over 45 years. It’s been great to connect already with so many amazing artists, and I’m looking forward to my first show there in January 2024.
Like many points of modern departure the Portland airport is clean and sterile. After weeks of chaotic movements and unstable sleep, there is at last a sense of calm in the orderly collapse of the possible trajectories into the certain path of the jetway. In another time I might have felt a deep discomfort in the sterile efficiency of these surroundings. If such feelings begin to emerge now, they are quickly stymied by the chaotic tumult of the Air Condor ticketing counter and the sweating disorder of the human throng.
This is the third ticket I have purchased. Val and I have formed the sketch of a plan during her last visit; we will ride a motorcycle along the Mediterranean, through Eastern Europe, into Turkey, and following the invisible winds of instinct, at last into an abstract beyond. After a month of planning however, we are left with few plans.
As we have navigated the corridors of this new beginning there have been intricate suggestions by fate, both the subtleness of an inexplicable nose bleed of a driver, and the brutal overtness of the impact into the rear pannier of the vstrom 650 we had planned to ship from Vancouver to Rome.
Retuning from my studio a week before our scheduled departure, I am thrown into the air. There is little warning, only the sudden jolt and a brief flicker of realization. As I lay on the ground listening to the sickening crunch of metal, plastic, and glass, I notice that my torso is perfectly aligned with the wheel of the oncoming car. There is a stillness and the moment of uncertainty ends as the driver comes to a halt.
I seem uninjured, and there is even a moment of comedy. As I try to pick the heavy motorcycle up, still unsteady, I teeter on the brink, one foot in the air and the risen motorcycle is poised to fall now on the other side. A nearby bystander however grabs my upturned heel, and together we navigate back to earth.
A great misfortune? I am completely uninjured, and I have received news on my way to the airport, on a new flight to Frankfurt, that I will receive an generous payout from the driver’s insurance. Walking through the airport I look out on the distant mountains, gleaming in the sunny, and regard the polite, kind people of my city with the sudden eyes of an outsider. Confronted by the certain hubris of all plans in the face destiny, there can ultimately be only a surrender into the currents of the journey to come.
Just finished up a few new pieces, including the long in progress work Nightfall at Justice Center, another in my Kabbalah series, and a small one featuring raven:
Im also very excited to be part of shows with Astoria Visual Arts and Art at the Cave:
The title of this piece is taken from the opening lines of a W.B. Yeats poem; describing in apocalyptic terms the spiraling out of order into chaos, I was reminded of the pacific trash gyre and the kaleidoscopic patterns of current. While the imagery of this painting presents a tangible environmental anchor to the dream of entropic undoing, I see in these symbols an equal connection to the realms of spirit and metaphor. The endangered marine life depicted in the piece is both a literal representation of an ecosystem caught in a spiral of extinction, and also ourselves, caught in ever remoter turnings of collective action. Swept into great movements of which we are both fisher and quarry, the animals are the titanic ghosts of our collective unconsciousness, rushing towards an unknowable end. There is beauty here too however, as even in the moment of the onrush, we are left as observers of an ineffable beauty that extends into, and transcends, the gyre.
Almost finished with my PDXWLF installation! You can see it from Feb 3rd – 11th.
Opening night on Feb 3rd First Friday will also include open studios, live music, and fire dancing.
“Brightly shining from within, the installation imagines the tangible reality of ocean pollution as the dream landscape of our civilization. Gently breathing, the assemblage is both the physical and psychological flotsam of our interconnected civilization. Swimming in endless waves of plastic particulate and glowing trash, viewers will be invited into the luminous ghost net of recovered marine debris and metaphysical light.”
Disgorged by the Ocean into Liminal Brightness 
While in some ways this style is a natural progression from my earlier work, there is also a something distinctively new that I am very excited by. Better photos coming soon….
I’m excited to be teaching an upcoming workshop at Earth Space PDX! The 3 hour class will focus on practical and psychology techniques for creating art. Oil paint and other supplies will be provided. Visit the the sign-up page for more details.
Had a great time talking with John Teply as part of For the Seventh Generation. John is a great interviewer, and it was wonderful to be able talk a bit about the the role of chaos in the creative process, working internationally in areas of conflict, and the importance of environmental preservation.
I’m happy to announce that I’ll be part of The Seventh Generation project this year. My piece, Perpetua, was completed plein air at the Strawberry Hill Wayside on the Oregon coast. I’m excited to be a part of this amazing conservation project, and I will be giving a talk on during the opening night in Lincoln City.
“For The Seventh Generation is about connecting with place over time. We are forming a one-hundred year arts organization whose reason for being is the ocean. We want to make art that functions at the center of human life, not at its edges. Our showcase event is the For The Seventh Generation Project, The one-mile Pano-Mural for the Washington, Oregon, and California coasts. Our guiding sentiment is “Above all else, a healthy ocean.” The lengthy time aspect referred to by the title is from a notion that we need to think within a longer time frame to address our problems. We need to make choices not just for ourselves an our generation, or for our children or even our grandchildren, but to acknowledge that this is the only planet that any of us will ever have, for all species, for all life, and that we share this planet with the future. Our decisions should reflect that.”
Finally got my new works from last year photographed. Ian at Shoot Your Art did an amazing job as always. I’m amazed every time at the difference professional photography can make.
