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Trying to convey physical presence or rather physical impression of the subject... This one is Rain Forest (Puerto Rico).

Once, a group of American vanguard artists (I believe, they belonged to the New York School) send a telegram to P. Picasso (who lived in France at that time) asking the latter to support their efforts to "liberate" art, in other words, "break the ice", let artists have the utmost freedom of expression by removing any sort of restrictions/rules in the process of creation.

Picasso refused to give his support to this way of thinking. He argued (and his words were recorded by his mistress Francoise Gilot), that art is strong when it has to struggle against academic rules set by a classical school of art. This fight between the old (academic) school and the new (modern) art - is what gives art strength, and this is what pushes it forward. If there is no struggle - there is no movement, art simply does not have the necessary firm ground to push off!

For Jackson Pollock, for instance, such a springboard was his teacher Thomas Benton. Pollock was able to push off his master very far to get where he got and to become what he finally became.

In the meantime, Pollock himself left no ground for the future artists by his "breaking the ice"...

Do we need a time machine to go back in the past and, maybe, try to restore the Academy???

From the book by Andre Chastel "The Genius of Leonardo Da Vinci" (translation Copyright 1961, by the Orion Press, Inc; Copyright Club de Libraires de France, 1960):

"... Leonardo gives the painter his secret - what Leonardo calls... the informed sketch. Contrary to all tradition, this consists of putting down on paper the mass of forms dictated by the unconscious without first working out the details. It is objectified when the painter daydreams before confused stains and splashes on old walls, and it is intended to make the observation more pliable and to give practice to the rapid interpretation of the inexhaustible depths of things."

"... this secret permits him to freeze the instant at which the mind feels actively connected with the totality of things, for this "chaos" that the artist projects and explores on paper is like an outcry from nature itself."

"This discovery throws some light on the fate that led Leonardo to leave several important works unfinished. The importance of these statements is confirmed by Leonardo's decision, about 1501 or 1502, to introduce non-completeness (non finito) into painting in order to enhance its fullness. Finally, it should not be overlooked that the master who sets such store by the possibilities of the informed sketch, takes pleasure in the drawings of his last years in the swirling and roiling visions of catastrophies and cosmic disasters that turn even chaos and the blind forces of the universe into the final aims of his art."

"The conclusion of the unprecedented effort to be objective - to embrace the structure of things, the organization of forms, and the perfection of relief - is the final triumph of the subjective".

"When you're alone you possess everything, when you're together you possess only a half..." (L.da Vinci)

I can't believe it; I believe it will live as long as natural human emotions and feelings exist.

What will come after post-modernism??? This is the question.

Since post-modernism is the extreme, there seems to be nowhere else to go, I feel that art will come back, meaningfulness, emotion, sentimentalism should come back as the opposite of what we have now.

However, the face of art will be different, it will absorb all previous experience and rise to a new level. I think new artists should make use of everything that has been worked out by previous generations, post-modernism being not an exclusion.

I try to employ "dripping", "finger", "air brush". "splashing", collage - all sorts of techniques (and ideas!) - to produce representational, meaningful, emotional, deep (in its classical sense) art. To me, this is the way out of the absurdity and chaos we have today.