(How Many More) Years of Struggle Against Lies, Stupidity, and Cowardice

(Fort Union Ranch, New Mexico 2017)

24" x 36"

oil on canvas

Portrait of the Artist Horseback

(Fort Union Ranch, New Mexico 2017)

digital photo

THE SECOND WORLD COMING

Mimicking the antique aesthetic of junk stores, where one might meet an elder with stories from the primitive world, fastened tight to the seat of Western cinema, whichever year from the 50’s to yesterday’s Tarrantino, Cowboy hats, and fringe, tattoos, fashion of the Campo, Idols and Icons, imperfect, bigger than reality but always insisting Autobiography, part of local legend, these subjects are painted and unpainted with a sense of careful balance, bordering on shameful selectivity, within the sublime settings they are born in, sometimes left as nothing more than scars, distant memories rather to be forgotten, rendering the message unintelligible, open to revisionist historians, casual appreciators, venomous agitators alike, all mumbling gibberish, protestations, finding a voice to stand behind with conviction, hopefully accepted as part of a community of likeminded individuals, but individuals alike, respected, listened to, well read, well liked for various unpredictable reasons all combining into a warm fuzzy feeling of contentment amongst the harsh realities of the present day of each one’s unconscious understanding of what that really is. 

Painting is a traditional art form.  Some might call it old fashioned, limiting, regressive, or redundantly, dead.  As a painter from New York, now living in rural Chile, my presence amongst my neighbors and the paintings themselves are the essence of modernity, completely unprecedented, of alien strangeness.  Amongst my compatriots in USA, I am like my paintings, stubbornly old fashioned.  The displacement of ideas and objects are what distinguish culture and politics, and what create misunderstandings, conflict, policy, and labels such as, First World and Third World.  What happened to the Second World?  It seems more important to some to define differences rather than similarities.  In any case, the differences are more interesting.  The world over, in developing countries, rural areas, isolated islands, deserts, and hinterlands, these differences are colliding on an alarming scale with the tech boom and tourism.  Those who lived off the grid for generations have traded their horses for cell phones.  It was shocking to me to learn that these people never had what was formally called a telephone, ie. the land line, which to me, together with the answer machine, was the golden age of communication, never to be remastered.  Or am I confusing perfection with nostalgia of my youth?  Back to the Future.  My experience in Chile has inspired my painting with these tensions between the old fashioned and the new.  Nostalgia and longing for the aesthetic of the antique, the ideology and culture of the country, fishing, farming, hunting, communication, and transportation which are constantly in flux, hell bent on technological revision only staggered by massive economic gaps, social gaps following suit, all helter skelter, combining or rather colliding, the contemporary vehicle literally rear ending the traditional ox cart, causing certain disaster and dismay, all too easily overlooked and forgotten in favor of an otherwise awkward combination of fleeting beauty, moments of grace, like childhood, the answering machine, rarely masterpieces like those great paintings of old, when there was nothing but oil, canvas and brushes, today’s solutions much too transitory, the audience typically distracted, lacking the slow cooked evolution of mentor/student, living more in the future than in the present, all looking towards the Second World Coming.

Portrait of the Artist

(Buchupureo, Chile 2017)

digital photo

An Astonishing Story of Immense Power, Emotion and Even, In the Midst of Horror, Beauty

(Buchupureo, Chile 2017)

24" x 36"

oil on canvas

Sexed Up Version of James Brown

(Concon, Chile 2016)

36" x 54"

oil on canvas

The Sea Is Within Me

(Rancho Santana, Nicaragua 2016)

36" x 54"

oil on canvas

Head Fool Ideas (House Quilt)

(Casa del Cerro/House on the Hill, Buchupureo, Chile 2016)

48" x 48"

oil painted mural

Between Savagery and Civilization (Comancheria)

(Wind River Wyoming--Santa Fe New Mexico, 2004-2017)
60 x 60 cm

oil on canvas

When Beauty Flows Thinly Into the Sponge of Illimitable Space
(Fort Union New Mexico, 2017)

7" x 10"

watercolor on paper