Soul Search
One could certainly define my artistic activity as polyvalent. Easel paintings, murals, mosaics, bronze and polyester resin sculpture for private clients and for public entities, I have had the privilege and immense good fortune to try my hand at a myriad of fascinating techniques and forms of expression. Here the viewer will find examples of my oil paintings and sculptures.
Stylistically speaking, these works would fall into the category of magic realism or imaginative realism. The viewer will sense a strong preoccupation with ethnic groups
different from my own. Travel made the conception of the paintings possible, by removing me from my known universe and exposing me to other ways of life. And I like the idea of taking my audience with me on an inner and outer voyage.
I believe we are living in exciting times, and searching for meaning in a world that is in total transformation. I try to express this constant metamorphosis of our view of reality in my paintings. Mystery lurks everywhere underneath a seemingly banal reality. It is this mystery that I pursue.
India is an amazing country, and it is quite a challenge to attempt to express its elegance and complexity. The spectacular tapestry of daily life is overwhelming, and subjects bombard the artist from all directions. I have chosen a figurative approach to all subject matter because it is my desire to share my feelings with the largest audience possible. Yet this realism is subjective to the point of sometimes slipping into the hyperreal or surreal, in an attempt to evoke the invisible - ideas and emotions related to my chosen subject.
The paintings are executed in oil on linen canvas, in a technique which can be considered a contemporary version of the procedure used during the Flemish Renaissance by painters such as Jan van Ecyk and Rogier Van der Weyden. The technique involves employing both an oil medium and a glue emulsion in successive layers, the realisation of a monochrome in raw umber and flake white, the rendering of the entire image in optical grays before the final stages of color glazing. Paintings done in this labor intensive fashion require months of work; an average length of time for a medium size work being 2 or 3 months.
The sculptures are responses to public art commissions, and concern themes that are both of local and universal pertinence. I have always enjoyed, and been grateful for the communicative aspects of public art; of the opportunity it offers to explore and express the ideals latent in the human psyche.
Wondrous Birth
Maya
Peace on Earth
Ebb and Flow
The Tiller of the Earth
