Introduction
The web is an extraordinary tool, perhaps the greatest advance in communication
since the printing press. Here we meet as anonymously or personally as
we wish. Among us may be paupers and kings, thieves and philanthropists.
One thing that unites us is the potential of the moment. This moment is
the birthplace of the future. As your brain comprehends these words and
images, it begins to create a new myth, the myth of the present.
I am an artist dedicated to creating an iconography for the mythology
of our present moment. Our knowledge has expanded so much that we need
new visual metaphors to express our understanding and appreciation of life.
I want to introduce myself to you by telling a few stories from my life.
I want you to know who I am and what I love. This will enable you to see
how my artworks parallel and reflect my life experience.
Here you have stories of a few incidents on my creative odyssey. I illustrate
them with some photos and images that mark my path.
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My Cowboy Dream
When I was a boy I dreamed of becoming a cowboy when I grew up. Paintings
of the "old west" by artists like Charles Russell fascinated me.
I loved the mountains and plains of the western United States. The summer
I turned 13 I found a rancher willing to hire me for room and board. I
worked as a cowboy for six summers during my adolescence, riding across
some of the largest cattle ranches in the country. After riding all day
I would illustrate letters with awkward pen and ink drawings in the evenings.
I posed for this shot when I was 19, in 1972. My cowboy years taught me
an important lesson: I was directing my own adventure. I could explore dreams
in my daily life. |
I Learned to Think at Amherst
It's fair to say that I did everything for the wrong reasons for a very
long time. I didn't learn to think for myself until I was at Amherst College.
Among the many experiences that shaped me at the time, two encounters with
extraordinary men, come first to mind. One man was Chris Holt, a student
two years my senior. The other was Ben DeMott, a professor of English literature.
It was Chris who told me to study with DeMott. By enacting Shakespeare at
midnight on the greens, by reading Coleridge in candlelight, by listening
to classical music cranked to the max, Chris awoke my dormant imagination.
This is a recent photo of Chris and me at his beautiful New England farm. Click here if you'd like to read a poem Chris wrote
for me. Once Chris awoke my imagination DeMott forced me to exercise it.
Until I met DeMott, I had never known that thinking and imagining were the
same thing. DeMott asked questions I had no idea how to answer thereby forcing
me to create the answers. I've been making it up as I go along ever since. |
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At Amherst I also awakened to my own fascinations and predilections.
A classmate named Michael Mullins made a difference to me. Michael had
an extraordinary intellect but I most admired him for his artistic talent.
Although I hadn't gone to Amherst with the intention of becoming an artist,
it was while there that I discovered I liked to draw. When Michael saw
my drawing, he encouraged me to go to Europe after school and study art
in the great museums of the Western world. On his advice, I spent nine months
after graduation, and all my money, drawing in the museums of England, France,
Spain, and Italy. I returned to the United States, landing in New York City,
with 3,000 sketches and hardly a cent. These three studies were selected
from those works, most of which have been lost.
click on a tumbnail to see a larger JPEG
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