Natural and Spiritual Forces
RUNNING ALONG THE SHORE - We've all seen people running on the shore, but the big picture of the large waves and coming storm give it a sense of a human against the elements, that could at any time turn against him.
BIG SUR - I took basic and advanced individual Army Training at Fort Ord, just outside Carmel and Monterey California. Big Sur's 17 mile drive was a tourist attraction I never got to see, but from a beautiful photo I created this scene at sunset with birds wheeling and lining the shore. Maybe I can see it someday.
HOT CALIFORNIA SUN - The annual forest fire season in California has grown so long and deadly that I was moved to create this smoke covered scene reflecting the glow of the fires and blotting out all but the disc of the sun.
DREAMS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS - This piece was painted while I was reading Paradise Lost, and was heavily influenced by the woodcut drawings of Gustave Doré associated with that work. Pthalo Blue is my favorite color, and diluting it with water, I was able to achieve on canvas paper effects normally associated with watercolor paints.
THE LAST LEAVES - This piece evokes O'Henry's story Last Leaf, about a painter who dies in the snow saving the life of woman who has lost the will to live. My first experiment that combines pencil drawing on canvas board with acrylic paint, the leaves were drawn completely from my imagination; a friend of mine, well versed in botany, noted that I had painted three different kinds of leaf on the same tree. Well that's what abstract is for, right?
PROGRESS OF THE SWAN - During 2020, amid the Covid Crisis, I signed up for a watercolor course taught by Alex Tolstoy, a well respected artist who does much work in that medium. She assigned me to paint birds, and this one captures, in my view, the grace and forward motion of this magnificent creature.
THE SPIRIT OF GOD MOVED OVER THE FACE OF WATERS - inspired at the time by the power of the creation story in Genesis 2, the Hebrew literally says Spirit of God. Whether religion's resulting maelstrom is building up or condemning our world is an increasingly relevant topic.
ARTIST HOLDING AN ORANGE - While working in my cold basement studio one winter, I decided to paint my left hand holding an orange, to build my comfort working with hands. It was so cold that my hand and wrist began to turn blue. Phil noted that my style in this was similar to that of Julian Freud, though he observed that no one would pay for a painting of a hand holding an orange. Some memories are beyond price.
HALLOWEEN MASK - Phil Ratner asked me to create something on a plaster cast of a human face. I transformed it into a dragon whose eyes are decorated by a bat, and built up the nose to look like a ghost.
PSALM ONE - This work was created on the Legacy Art Studio Platform, and depicts a solid tree planted beside still waters, as is referred to in the first of the 150 Psalms of David.
PROCESSIONAL - During the period when I devoutly studied and practiced my faith in the Conservative Jewish Tradition, a scene of a youth kissing the Torah during the processional or recessional was common. I gave this as a gift to a client of mine who was very devout in his religious beliefs.
PROUDLY STANDING FOR EQUALITY - One of my first drawings, this demonstrates my respect for Blacks, who as a group face daily dangers and fears largely traceable to over 500 years of slavery, Jim Crow, white prejudice and a total rejection of their value in the country whose wealth they built. Reparations are long overdue and we should get about the business of righting that wrong.
SPIRIT OF THE TREE & FLAME - Beginning as an Acrylic painting on canvas paper, I enhanced this image on the Legacy Art Studio computer platform to capture a spiritual view of forest, fire and the cosmos.
THE BROAD UNENDING RIVER - This is an artist's proof of my creation designed to represent my personal take on Tai Chi. It is a mobius strip of water, flowing from darkness into light with both light and dark spots within its course. Only three numbered Giclees of this piece were created, and one was presented to each of the instructors who trained me in Tai Chi.
THE PROGRESS OF REASON - Humans are forever attempting to use their their reason to overcome their baser, animal instincts. Here the image of the largest snake ever to live, the Tyranaboa, represents the beastly side of man; the Greek figure represents Reason attempting to escape from its animal origins. It is not clear whether Reason is emerging from or being swallowed by the beast, at least it was not in 2020 when this was created.
TORAH, ORAH, AURA - The Hebrew Bible is called Torah, Orah is the Hebrew word for Light, and so those two words are used to convey the concept that the Bible lights the way for people. I love word play, and added the word aura because of the unusual light of this picture of a boy reading Torah. The play derives from the movie title from a film about World War II, Tora, Tora, Tora.
ABRAHAM - I have little faith in the authenticity of the fairy tales that religion puts forth as truth. Nevertheless, pictures of people seeking beauty and peace are an inspiration to the artist, and here is what I conceived the Father of Western Monotheism to be like.
FIRESIDE - I've always been drawn to fire, its beautiful colors, warmth and lively energy. This acrylic painting is of the hearth in my home, and conveys all of the elements of fire that I find attractive.
WHO'S CREATING WHOM? - I wonder whether religion is the creation of a super-human intelligence or the creation of the human mind trying to deal with powers and circumstances beyond its ken. This piece is my way of representing one of the most basic questions facing humanity: If there is a God, did he/she/it create us or did we create him/her/it?
THE EYES OF AGE, THE HAND OF TIME - An acrylic paint composition drawn from two photos of William Boroughs (author of Naked Lunch) by Josef Karsch. This is my take on wisdom, hard won after several scores of years working both with the hand and the mind.
THE ERLKING - My take on death caused by events beyond our control. This acrylic was painted while summering on the beach in Duck, NC. The very day I laid on the final strokes, just as I finished the piece, I learned my Mother was stricken with Cancer. She died two months later.
CHEDER - My take on a Hebrew School for boys in 1930s Eastern Europe. I subtitled it Three Faces of Education: Boredom, Resentment and Terror. I was expelled from Cheder for cutting class two weeks running to play dodgeball with my classmates at the YMCA.