The Tantric universe is described in terms of mind, energy and matter.
Energy is an extension of the mind and expresses itself in a tangible state of matter.
And that interface in turn describes a dualistic, sexually charged continuum of creative/destructive, active/passive, positive/negative, id and ego, resolving itself in pure consciousness.
The practice of painting can be seen to epitomize this essentially Manichaein construct and it is this dialectic that is central to my own painting practice as an intuitive process of formulation, evolving organically and inflected by analytical judgment.
Underlying this attitude are the physical properties of paint - it’s plasticity, transparency, reflectivity - which determine how a given painting resolves itself - the point where a sort of visual logarithm achieves dynamic equilibrium. I explore an equivocal, metaphorically rich boundary between abstraction and figuration, a completely subjective and open engagement with the material is integral to the process.
For me there is scarcely any distinction between the conception of a work and its technical execution.
It is, paradoxically, a utopian, metaphysical impulse manifested in an idiom for exploring post-modern existential conditions.
The act of painting ritualizes aspiration/hope/optimism and autonomy. It becomes a locus for cultural influence and identity. As such it offers a means to investigate the degree to which our world is a constructed reality – a cyclic process of inception, inflection, adaptation, alteration and death.
My attitude toward painting in particular - as distinct from all other media - is best understood through the prism of those masterworks of all ages and cultural derivation, that I’ve had the privilege of seeing up close in some of the greatest museum collections in New York, Mexico City and on the Continent.
Were I to identify a common denominator among the diverse range of traditions by which I am influenced it would be tribal and religious iconography in that much of it lies at the nexus of formal, abstract, material properties of painting and spiritual, humanist concerns of figuration.