Information

• Tulips Sideways with Obfuscations

  February, 2022

  watercolor

  13.25 x 8.75 inches

  Portfolio Updates

Statement

• Here is a small painting of Tulips, planted outside of the agency where I used to work in downtown Pittsburgh. I am intrigued by the problem of realism in painting. To me, realism is a philosophical conundrum. Reality is a unified field of paradoxes. When many artists think of realism, we think of duplicating what our eyes see. How limiting that is. The skill to model what one sees in paint is an academic marker of achievement, but it can become an addiction. It becomes easy to lose sight of talking about the problem of what reality is or could be.

  The courtyard (Commonwealth Place Park) outside of Gateway Towers, in Pittsburgh, PA, always had Tulips planted everywhere. I took some photographs of some of these when I had a spare minute. I'm always more interested in the dynamics between the analytical and intuitive/emotional aspects of what's going on, more than depicting "what things look like." So, what's going on here is essentially a pixellated photograph, turned sideways and then used as a background for an abstract composition.

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