Date of Award

12-1977

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

Legacy Department

Visual Studies

First Advisor

Thomas McPeak

Second Advisor

Peter Lee

Third Advisor

Farrell B. Brown

Abstract

I have arrived, none too late, at some conclusions about my work; and although these conclusions are recent, I would prefer to think certain insights have been with me for some time. It is the refinement and definition of these somewhat hazy insights into more specifics conclusions that have set the tone of my painting "progress" over the past few years. This has been a progression from raw source to subject matter via technique. While certain artists, particularly the pop artists and the New York School (Johns, Rauschenberg, Segal, et al.), have stirred me, the cinema has been my greatest influence. Through too many dark afternoons I was served up the visions of others, but more than this, films afforded me a method when I most needed it. I found that several "frames" -- in my case, a grid -- could be utilized to make a single statement. Random pursuits in technique had offered decorative non-objective images -- more or less, raw source on canvas -- but it was only the particular method of taping a grip pattern onto the canvas that allowed me the first insights into more subjective matters. Color was no real concern. By progressively using tape more freely while at the same time exercising more control in taping "real" or real-based images and infusing some pre-conceived color usage, I have broken old tightened patterns and have tired more recently to create single unit paintings of a certain popular or common imagery -- gaudy atmosphreres, artificial violence, valueless or vague mysteries, common sexual frustrations, and the ambigous dual relationships of space and matter, cerebration and "action," unconscious and conscious -- now contained in a setting of distorted interiors -- bathrooms, sitting rooms, bedrooms -- or landscapes which become, in my mind, claustrophobic interiors. This "popular" imagery is my translation onto canvas of moods, sensations, and fantasies which dominate my life. Obviously this short-spanned evolution has not been so facile and there have been more contributing factors and helpful suggestions than I could possibly jot down here. I am not through with the synthesis; the "insights" are only just surfacing.

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