Impressionistic Conversations with Colored Light Fields

This morning, awakening from the storm outside, and the turbulence within, I realized: Something is afoot.

I once heard Lewis Black say, “But I have thoughts,” a lead-in to this scathing commentary about the thoughtless destruction by politicians he critiqued. That was nearly 20 years ago, and yet, if anything, things feel worse out there now. But my thoughts aren’t about that. They’re about existing and painting.

Decades ago, in the shower, I realized: I exist so the Universe can perceive itself. Maybe that’s our role—brief, but extraordinary. Fleeting, but reflective. Worth savoring.

And painting. As a little kid, I started with images of things—horses – then cells in biology and buildings and people. But I only sorta liked it.

By contrast, Geometry fascinated me more, with its precise relationships and surprises. I was a year ahead of everyone in math, thriving in geometry, and then two years of a soul-crushing trigonometry teacher derailed me. Only now do I realize what I lost.

Fast forward. I first painted things, then ideas of things and felt senses—symmetries, colors, juxtapositions, the interplay of forms. Not representations, but emergences from what I call The Thatness—that space just beyond awareness, often revealed in dreams.

Hundreds of paintings have been exhibited. The silence in response to that ostensible achievement has, as the cliche goes, been deafening. It’s a parallel to my high school days, where constructing geometric forms went unnoticed—(except when an upperclassman made me do his homework — a story for another time). And yet, I continue.

One constant persists: I love creating Backgrounds—fields of color and color patterns. But I always felt a pressure to provide something in the foreground. Maybe because, academically, plagiarism was a sin, and I feared being viewed as merely echoing Rothko or Albers. A silly concern, in retrospect.

Still, I painted. Decades, you know.

Recently, something shifted. Playing with blues and teals, I happened up a way to capture a surface reminiscent of light interacting with water. It wasn’t really a depiction; the paint itself just seemed to hold the light. Teravarna accepted one of these for their "Water" exhibit. It was kind of anticlimactic. I’m sure nobody really understood the significance because, of course, I hadn’t told anyone.

So, I just kept at it.

And then I found a way to use large pieces of paper — 48 x 72 inches — adhered to canvas (thanks to Sergio Gomez — Kudos, good sir). So, now, I’m seeing larger Fields of shifting light. Not paintings of things. Not concepts of things. Not backgrounds. Not feelings, quite, though the felt sense of the conversation between hues in the painting still guides me.

I think I’m painting the colors of light. Some Evanescence.

Or, as my brain jokes: Like Monet and Rothko had a whiskey child.

And I’d really like to get a few thousand of these out of the house.