This series began in the air. I was mesmerized by the ‘paintings’ I saw on the terrain below me. On flight after flight, hour upon hour, I feverishly photographed and sketched, bringing home scores of little memories. I was annoyed when I couldn’t get a window seat. By taking pieces of my pictures and combining them with print and Internet images, a new direction took form in my painting, one I had rarely taken in the past. Previously, I painted real subjects from life. After the simple observe-and-record phase of those early works, I reinvented them. By changing, rearranging, or adding, I created a new interpretation, a new environment. My work remained realistic, but always, even before I was conscious of it, I included visual pieces which illustrated an ever present contradiction. I feel we are living in a universal oxymoron. As I wrote many years ago, “We are all alone, together.” There always seems to be more than one truth, and we have to decide which to believe in. For me, it is a most difficult decision.
In this Heaven and Earth series, I depart from my past. I began this direction by painting visions of the glorious natural heavens and contrasting them with the familiar world of the earthbound, all contained in small transparent boxes. I gave in to my new ‘style’ and waited to see where these Surrealscapes, as I came to call them, would take me. I am still on that continuum...creating realities of my own invention. Like the surrealists before me, I only believe in my own empirical observations, because nothing beyond me is for certain.