Exuberance
oil/canvas
38"x48"

La Joie
oil/masonite
11x14

Side-by-Side
oil/canvas
10x16

Artist statement

My treatment of subject is highly personal. Rather than describe nature I attempt to evoke feeling by dramatic distortion of color, shape and space. These plastic elements work together to create an overall picture design.

Reading my paintings

My pictures show figurative and spatial distortion that work together with color to communicate a unified visual and emotive idea. Figures are portrayed not as specific individuals or objects but as elements in a still life, sometimes silhouette-like--a generalized approach to figurative imagery. Often there is the effect of figures tentatively emerging from an abstract setting. The picture plane is generally flat. Or there are just a few related picture planes working together in shallow or deep space. The illusion of space is often presented as a mixture of two and three dimensions. Space is often distorted, not conforming to everyday logic.

Although my canvases undergo many versions before they are released each version emphasizes intuition and spontaneity working expressively through color, line, & spatial manipulation, facilitated with gestural brushwork. My paint handling is loose, rapid, irregular, sometimes dense, uneven, and perhaps at times, bravura. My intention is to avoid showing a polished or even finished "craft" look so as to allow the art quality of my work to dominate.

Often I explore painting's language of abstraction and representation through many differently handled versions of the same subject.

I would characterize my work as in the formalist tradition: emphasizing the plastic elements & their relationships.

Irving Aronowitz