Space, objects, color and light all evoke feelings, memories and emotions. If the painter can somehow express those associations they might be apparent to the viewer. This would be to express the ineffable. Ineffability is a psychological phenomenon that I see as connected with the Platonic conception of anamnesis: a feeling associated with a new experience cannot be formulated in words but it is familiar and ‘known’. For me it is analogous to the notion of the beatific vision, which Aldous Huxley suggests in The Doors of Perception. Huxley describes it as the quality of naked existence, the idea of fresh experience, of seeing something for the first time.

I have long had an interest in the work of Edwin Dickinson and Giorgio Morandi and the connection between their work and the work of Jean Baptiste Camille-Corot. Distilling the act of painting to the highly responsive one-shot painting has always been greatly appealing to me. This limited and tonal approach facilitates an immediate reaction and results in a great freshness and clarity of vision.

Having also been involved in creating music for several years I have become accustomed to processes of layering tightly wound repetition with patterns of more spacious intervals. My painting process parallels that of the music I make in that the paintings are created in alternating passes of linear drawing and flatly blocked in color or tone, which, gradually refined, come together to create form and light.

My relationship to music has always been physical. I appreciate sound that has an identifiable action associated with it. I have been to drawn to German Rock of the 1970’s in particular because at times it seems almost mechanically repetitive yet it fluctuates, transforms and retains the character and slight inconsistency of human error. This is a very significant link between music and visual art: evidence of the artists’ hand. It is important for me to have a sense of how something was made. When I can visually recreate an action in my mind’s eye it enhances my connection to the artist.

Another important commonality I see between music and painting is the power to convey mood and emotion. Many of my works have a dark and heavy atmosphere, which is similar to that of the music I am drawn to. I am interested in finding and imbuing subjects with a disturbing, melancholic quietude.