A Paint Box Theater: Walking in New York 

 People are events; not facts. For me, the challenge, in depicting them, is always to honor their specific eventedness, giving the particularities of individuals— especially in large complex paintings— room to stand as urban icons of contemporary reality. The image of the street is a metaphor for the activities of life and the vitality of art, seen alternately in objective and subjective terms: as an outer reality in which we take an active role and as an inner world where the self is set apart, existing as if " beyond."

 Empathizing with the beings I paint is a recognition that they may also be emanations of myself. Some images define scenes that have evolved into metaphors of larger social realities. In fact, certain of these scenes have not been comfortable to look upon, let alone paint. Painting becomes a way of thinking, of coming to understand what one truly feels. The point is to elicit empathy over indifference—to bear witness.  

My larger project is an exploration of the tragicomic theater of life, a concept that stretches back to Plato and Plotinus. In this way: any assessment of the “true nature of things” must seek to intuit the essential “presences” behind ordinary reality, to reveal a hidden theme, the splendor and mystery of “being” itself. Art is not solely about art, or self-expression, rather it is a constructed symbolic meditation,  the nebulous events of life made tangible, the whole of which seeks to reveal the implied mythical richness of unconscious life.