Posed photographs of groups of people—families, classmates, workers, and friends—have been the major source of images for my paintings for some time. These photos appeal to me on several levels.
I am drawn to them first for their shapes and patterns. I love the repetition of arms, crossed legs, hairbows, shirt stripes. The little negative shapes between people prompt an almost puzzle-like approach to the painting, an ambiguity of space. One color may represent background, legs, blouses, and faces within the same piece. The fact that many of the source images are black and white allows me to impose my own abstract color without limitations.
Past the purely visual, the pictures have a tremendous emotional content. People sit or stand, usually tensed, concentrating on projecting the best of themselves. They look straight out at you. My photos are from as far back as the youth of my great-great grandparents, and from as far away as the former Soviet Union. They are cherished keepsakes of my family and discarded memories found at yard sales, flea markets, and in abandoned homes. No matter from what generation or country, be they of ancestors, strangers, or friends, the pictures describe the same complex relationships, the same sense of pride.
I am an avid admirer of the American artists Romare Bearden, Jim Dine, Fairfield Porter, and Milton Avery. I strive through my own paintings to capture what is, in my opinion, so special about theirs...the sublime balance between the emotionality of the subject and the abstract nature of their surface, color, line, and brushwork. My ultimate goal is to produce a figurative painting that would be equally powerful were it purely nonrepresentational.
