It’s always an honor to have pieces chosen for special exhibits at Five Deuces Galleria, which just won Best Art Gallery in Tampa Magazine’s Best of the City 2023! And I have two new pieces in a new show, Passion, which opens Saturday, October 7 and runs through the end of November.
Two Pianos
My first passion was music, and especially the piano. I played out familiar tunes and made up my own even before my mother began teaching me formally, when I turned four. She was my first and most influential teacher.
I also sang, and later learned to play organ, violin and string bass.
But the piano was my first love, and I am currently taking lessons again to improve my technique and master some demanding classical literature.
Pianos allow me to express a full range of emotions, but each piano is unique and demands specific attention to achieve the desired expression.
Two Pianos uses photos of a restored 1898 Steinway B and a 2010 Fazioli F228, two wonderful but entirely different instruments I’m fortunate to own.
The Steinway B, introduced in 1878 (with 88-note keyboard since 1891), is still being made and is sometimes called the “perfect piano”. Fazioli introduced their pianos in 1981, and they are considered among the finest made today. Both are a joy to play. Here they blend in a furnace of passion and desire.
Two Pianos, 20″x24″ collage on paper/mat, 2023
My Home is the Sky
I’ve been flying since I was 18, 49 years ago. Flying was my first passion not influenced by parental interests or persuasion.
I love flying for the perspective it gives me on the physical world. But I also treasure the mental and emotional perspective gained as I focus on the flight, letting daily distractions fall away.
Flying for me is a contemplative practice comparable to my morning meditation. The collage comes out of the pull I feel for the sky, a recognition that part of me is only at ease flying high above the earth. A sunset, blue sky, high thin clouds above: this is heaven, every time I take off.
My Home is the Sky, 20″x26″ collage on paper/mat, 2023
Contemporary Art, Contemporary Artist
My art comes from inner experience and expresses things for which I sometimes have no words or conscious understanding.
But those inner experiences, even if driven by old cognitive patterns that originated in genetics and early life, are inevitably conditioned by the environment I am living in today, in this moment.
So it’s obvious I make contemporary art because this is now, and I’m creating now. My style and technique may change, but even if I were to paint baroque chamber scenes in oils, I would inevitably bring my own experience and culture into the scenes in ways that may be unconscious even to me.
I sometimes want to shut myself away, to surrender, to disengage, to lose myself in the creative process. I’ve fought a lifetime for things I consider essential, and especially for equality as a gay man, that are now threatened by clever cynics exploiting fear and ignorance. It’s disheartening to see successful appeals to the worst instincts of my fellow citizens.
But even that act, to choose not to engage and to retreat into a private space, is itself a response to the current environment, isn’t it?
Try as I might, I cannot escape context. And I cannot escape the fact that others viewing my art see it in context also: they see it in the context of their own experiences, expectations, knowledge, prejudices.
But contemporary art as a term is more complex. From Pop Art to NFTs, from the early 1960s to the present time, there are contemporary art movements and artists you may want to explore by clicking here.
My art is something that just happened and I am taking it where it leads. Less important than definition is this question: do you like it? If you do, it’s resonating in some way with you. Something in me is being seen by you. And that’s a cool thing.
For more exploration of contemporary art, check out these links.
