Artist Statement

This series is a retrospective on the influences that helped develop my personal provenances in modern abstract art. It takes a look at the past, rejects the expected, bends the rules and adds a little color to it all.

The period from approximately 1900 to 1930 has been my principal influence. During this time, the art world went through rapid and major changes: impressionism replaced earlier forms of art, opening avenues that made modern art possible. Additionally, artists of that period began incorporating African aspects of design, the true masters of abstract. Artists broke from being mere timekeepers with traditional portraits and landscapes when photographs became widely accepted. It became acceptable to push the boundaries of form and shape with an abundance of color.

For me this is the first time where mans creativity became more important in ones work that technique. A portrait can then be only limited to ones creative mind and talents to be innovative abstract. These early twentieth-century artisans began bending all the rules and pushed the bounds of form and shapes, with a plethora of color. Modern Art started many an argument at the time.

I've tried to incorporate this influences with my own "bending of rules" I learned with a formal academic education. Resulting in a love to add tangent edges, outline and to tweak the proportions. To flip flop what nature provides us with, making the organic/geometric, turn this into that, rearrange the graceful beauty of things. Another cubist concept of flattening of the image, with a minimum of modeling when working on a flat two-dimensional surface as a major design aspect. Routinely using color to spice it all up by placing perhaps a blue and orange side by side to get the appeasing pop to the eye. 

The truest challenge for me in this series was to stay true to my convictions about bending the rules within each work without assaulting the viewers' senses with intensity.