The opening for my solo exhibition, A Tapestry of Movement, is on November 14 from 5-7:00 PM. The show runs until December 13, 2019 at the ArtCenter Manatee, 209 9^th Street West, Bradenton, FL.

 

Drawing the model in college figure class was very instructive, but it seemed to lack an essential quality, movement.  Outside of the class, people were walking, running, biking, all sorts of motion. I really wanted to create something with people in action. 

            In the early 1970s I began using a camera to photograph my surroundings, the world of movement opened up.  The camera caught motion as a series of frozen moments.  Sometimes there was a blur when the film couldn’t keep up with the speed of a moving world.  Photography showed me things I was missing, but also its limitations.  I was looking for something unknown and photography was pointing me in a direction.

            As I look back, two influences had an important effect on my painting: the photographic experiments of Eadweard Muybridge, who on the late 19^th century, used the available technology to study humans and animals in motion. The other was an experiment performed by one of my professors, sculptor, Toshio Odate.  Every day for one year, Toshio set up his camera on a tripod on the exact same spot on a corner in his New York Neighborhood.  At the same time each day, he took one photograph of whatever was in the view of his camera.

            Muybridge used multiple cameras to break up the stride of a moving creature. While Toshio used one camera to show the changes of a single place over time.  My interests were somewhere in between the two, but my objective was always to create paintings.

            I found myself on a busy city street, standing still and photographing people walking past.  The elapsed time was just a few minutes, the photographs were taken almost at random.  Almost, but not quite. 

Up until that time, I had been taking many pictures of busy places, but not standing still and letting the crowd pass by.  In 1979 I painted Essex Street Rhythms, created from a single photo. It established the long, flattened format that I am still using. 

By 1989, I was using multiple photos to create a single painting. My first “Passacaglia” painting used the doorways leading to the outside of Grand Central Station as a device to break up the action, something reminiscent of movie frames.

            One could get the Impression, when looking back on a long project, of planning and a coherent progression. In fact, the opposite is true. I had no idea which of the myriad directions I was exploring would become a major series. I was just trying things.

Yet I continued to circle back to the idea of capturing movement over time.  One day on Broadway, New York City, I stood still in front of a lovely old doorway around 5 PM and fired off a number of pictures of fast-walking people crossing in front.

            Using a computer in addition to the camera, I multiplied the doorway and placed the hurrying pedestrians along the sidewalk.  The digital image, “Doorways Passacaglia”, was a breakthrough, but I still didn’t realize what I was doing.  However, the long format, the movement of people along the picture plane, became more of a concrete idea.

            What was it about that format that grabbed me?  I had seen examples before, in Egyptian wall paintings, Chinese scrolls and ancient Greek friezes.  All of these examples were telling a story. The main story I was telling was the passage of time and the beauty of motion.  There seemed to be a design aspect of the long, flattened images that was very exciting.  

I liked the graphic way the eye moved along the canvas in contrast to rectangular paintings, which tend to have circular compositional paths.   Instead of there being a single focal point, there are multiple focal points, drawing the eye along an undulating path.

In 2017, I began painting ballet dancers, after observing a rehearsal of the Sarasota Ballet. Since then, dancers have become part of the movement theme. They have a similar format as my street scenes, but convey a different feeling. 

The combination of grace and discipline in movement, inspires a look that is different from the street scenes.  If the two were music, the ballet paintings would be classical, while the street scenes would be a hip hop sound track.

I find myself caring about the people I paint.  I admire the grace, determination and strength of the dancers, while the street people are like so many people I have met around the world, working hard, raising kids, moving through the joys and troubles of life.  Maybe their progress along the street is a dance, too.  A ballet in street shoes.