My life as an artist has consisted of a journey of spatial relationships, in time. The works speak in a language which has evolved through the complicated process of living in the ever-evolving spectrum of the human experience.
My own part of that experience began in early childhood; color and form were the means by which I understood life and made sense of my own experiences. Through adolescence—with all of the challenges of accepting age and physical development—art continued to be the only language I could trust. The experiences of life were abstract concepts, whereas form and color had meaning that I am still living into.
Even in my late teens, when classmates were thinking about careers and college entrance requirements, the only path I could imagine was to enter art school. In 1969 I enrolled the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, where for two years I found a new world, filled with colleagues who not only understood, but who also shared what had been a solitary language.
Despite the heady joy of this environment, the need to support my art led me for a period to work in commercial graphic art. Looking back, I see now that the gift of those years was the discipline of working in specific, restricted parameters. For the first time, I learned that restrictions can often call forth unimagined freedom and creativity. Through these years, I gained a solid background in color, configuration, structural composition, and defined limits.
These three periods—unformed adolescence, joyous collaboration, and disciplined production—needed the synthesis that often accompanies young adulthood. In 1976, it was time to enter whatever crucible would meld and refine these experiences into a life that I could comprehend. I took a series of jobs that both enlivened my art and helped me gain a gem of practical wisdom. Free from the constraints of graphic discipline, my artistic work gained a new momentum.
Back in 1969 when I was an art student, I became acquainted with a small, but intensely creative co-op of artists in New York City. Their focus was how art is influenced by urban environment and how we integrate ourselves into a materialistic, stress-based society. Among other ventures, we staged an exhibition involving some 300 to 400 works by 50 artists. Titled “Windows,” this exhibition spread outward from the West Greenwich Village, filling storefronts, businesses, apartment buildings, and whatever space we could use. It was through this transformative collaboration that I first became acquainted with metaphysical theory, a catalyst that would forever change the way I see the world. Metaphysical theory, as I understand it, speaks of the enormous potential in all things. Things—as we experience them in the known world—are not necessarily limited to the way they have been traditionally seen, understood, and represented. Beyond that, there are potentials and things which have yet to be seen and understood. At the heart of metaphysical theory lie a series of interlocking questions: “What exists?” “What is?” “What am I?” “What is describing this to me?” These, and other questions, are not riddles to be answered or puzzles to be solved, but are springboards to unlocking potential and meaning that otherwise remains hidden.
This has had particular meaning for the collages that I create. Taking a representation and using it outside its traditional parameters loses nothing of the original. Rather, it unlocks a potential that otherwise is not seen, even as it beckons and calls the viewer to incorporate this way of seeing into his or her own vision. The juxtaposition of representations outside their traditional associations invites a similar set of responses. No small part of using metaphysical theory in collage is to ring the changes well enough that viewers sense the resonance, but also leaves room for viewers to hear un-suggested echoes of their own.
Metaphysical theory had also prepared in me the potential to hear resonances and echoes in other avenues of thought. A milestone event took place in 1989 when I was introduced to the Hindu based philosophy named Siddha Yoga. Its basic tenet is that the divine resides within each human being, neither as a guest nor as something foreign, but as the human being itself. From this, it teaches that we are perfect as we are now, a fact that we merely have forgotten. It is our task to recognize this inward divinity through a process called Sadhana, a process of meditation that enables each of us to realize our full potential in life.
Now in my twentieth year of this journey, I see the universe through new eyes, and this new vision has greatly affected my work as an artist. One of the more profound ways has been my experience with the mandala. The mandala is usually a symbolic representation which depicts the qualities of the Enlightened Mind in harmonious relationship with itself and all creation. A mandala may also be used to represent the path of spiritual development. Working through these concepts teaches me to live life more by its possibilities than by its limitations. The mandala has given me access to a sacred landscape, a never-ending journey of color and form.
The journey into this sacred landscape has been paved in many ways by exploring the new technique of digital or cyber art. When I discovered this medium, it caused a creative explosion, as a new world of dimension and color presented itself. I began seriously to explore the possibilities of this medium through the manipulation of form. The flexibility of this medium presents me with unlimited potential for multiple applications. Through my work with a digital camera, I have become aware that I have only just begun to open a universe of diverse creative potential, limited only by imagination.
From the creation of my interpretation of the modern mandala to a new project entitled “Perceptions” I continue to investigate the possibility of an expanded awareness. Digital art is truly an emerging art. Though not yet fully embraced by the established art world as a valid representation of true art—not unlike the way photography was viewed in its nascent stages—I believe that the day is fast approaching when digital art will be accepted for its true creative potential and will become a viable force in the world of art.
I would like to acknowledge the artists who have inspired me and given me the creative foundation from which I continue to build my life, not only as an artist, but also as a member of this world community. Many thanks go to Salvador Dali for his never-ending creative genius; to Pablo Picasso, who in his Cubist phase dissected man and the world which surrounded him; to Frantz Kline, Donald Judd, Robert Motherwell; and thanks, too, to all those artists—past, present, and future—who have encouraged us to take an introspective look at ourselves and to make us consider the potential which lies within us all.
