The works of architecture shown on my website are selected from my many years in private practice in New York City. These works were not generated by formula, or adherence to any rules of style, but are creative responses to specific situations. My understanding of the formal structures of architecture (historical, modern, and current) underlies them all.
In the last decade, to escape the compromises that are inherent in the practice of architecture, I have taken up painting as a serious vocation. Unlike my designs, my paintings do not come from any specific intention. I paint over what I cannot see, the blankness that I do see. Because I cannot do this if I allow my eye to plant an image on the surface, I work very quickly, fighting the urge toward composition. I don’t stop until I recognize something unexpected and coherent, which is the only adult experience I know that compares to the magic of random childhood discovery. Art resides in this moment of recognition. Painting is connection. Otherwise, it’s just paint. I hope that coming before one of my paintings, others will experience what I have.
In my IMPASSE paintings, I eliminate gesture and surrender control. These action paintings begin at an impasse and are a breaking of that impasse. They do not represent the impasse; they record the moment of liberation.
In my FORBIDDEN paintings I eliminate gesture. The constructions in these paintings are not images of the forbidden. My forbidden is beyond human knowing and cannot be directly seen. But my attempts to reveal it circuitously through painting (rapid removal of paint) only reveal my structured barriers to it. I know I can never reach what I want, but short of that, recording my attempts seems worthwhile.
In my FLUX paintings, I eliminate figuration.
In my watercolors, I record stages of the liquid destruction of works I paint for that purpose, returning to something I did as a boy — building structures with my wooden blocks, then carefully removing blocks to observe the resulting form of collapse. Some of these watercolors belong to my Entropy Series, and some to my Decomposition Series, both of which selectively record multiple stages in this loss of completeness and integrity.