My paintings are mental reconstructions of a world first felt then remembered.
I was always outside the real world: an imaginative child at first then a bookish teenager and now an expatriate, I see myself as a professional outsider. Thus I can pick elements from different genres and cultures in a mixture of new and old, familiar and strange, naive and sophisticated, classical and pop:
You'll find American Baseball legend Babe Ruth and Filipino Welterweight Manny Pacquiao rubbing shoulders with mythological creatures usually seen at the Met or the British Museum. Faux-marble palaces adorned with neon isosceles triangles. Palm trees shivering, Victorian ornaments pondering. Acrylic mountains looking on in the distance while wild beasts gaze tenderly at swimmers in Speedos.
Their world is at once familiar and eerie; sweet and violent; nostalgic and iconoclastic. They are longing for things unknown, fighting for unspoken causes, mourning a time long lost but never fully lived. Their bodies are young, strong, tight, lively; their surroundings are tidy. Full of energy yet they can go nowhere for they have nowhere to go. Their universe ultimately reveals itself a deserted stage, only seemingly three-dimensional.
There at last, color dictates space and space turns out to be but an ambiguous abstraction.
There at last, color dictates space and space turns out to be but an ambiguous abstraction.
I was always outside the real world: an imaginative child at first then a bookish teenager and now an expatriate, I see myself as a professional outsider. Thus I can pick elements from different genres and cultures in a mixture of new and old, familiar and strange, naive and sophisticated, classical and pop:
You'll find American Baseball legend Babe Ruth and Filipino Welterweight Manny Pacquiao rubbing shoulders with mythological creatures usually seen at the Met or the British Museum. Faux-marble palaces adorned with neon isosceles triangles. Palm trees shivering, Victorian ornaments pondering. Acrylic mountains looking on in the distance while wild beasts gaze tenderly at swimmers in Speedos.
Their world is at once familiar and eerie; sweet and violent; nostalgic and iconoclastic. They are longing for things unknown, fighting for unspoken causes, mourning a time long lost but never fully lived. Their bodies are young, strong, tight, lively; their surroundings are tidy. Full of energy yet they can go nowhere for they have nowhere to go. Their universe ultimately reveals itself a deserted stage, only seemingly three-dimensional.
There at last, color dictates space and space turns out to be but an ambiguous abstraction.
There at last, color dictates space and space turns out to be but an ambiguous abstraction.
