Forward Reverse with Digressions, 2013. This is a reappraised version of a painting I made 50 years ago. It represents an earlier mindset tempered by the requirements of a current one. Does the base of an artist's vision remain constant through an evolution of changes if the sources are personal? My interest then (in 1963) was to use four circular compositions of differing topics, complete in themselves, to form a composite cross-referencing whole (abstracted motifs of landscape, interior, figuration, architecture juxtaposed.) This present work obscures access to specific allusions, stresses the overall structural form as the topic. The distant initial inspiration came from the Stanza frescoes of Raphael. It can also call to mind the notions of "music of the spheres" where structures of the world are intertwined with abstractions like music or mathematics. As a result, what is discernible is that this current painting shows a time expanded memory bank, technical changes, and some aversion to the formerly painterly habits; though, the core of the original expression remains true today. Other compelling issues from this compositional concept are that the viewing becomes myopic, forcing the eye to skip around without a settled view. It's specifically what I want the viewer to do with all of my paintings: to see the smaller units (details) singly and then determine their status to the whole. A philosophical conceit, that everything is interdependent, globally interconnected, and that a whole network conjoined with its elements is the determinate for any conclusive apprehension.

 

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