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  This was painted 10 years ago.  I called it the Dragonfly Society.   The dragonfly symbolized the spirit of the whirlwind.  The vortex of dust rises from the Ghost Dancer’s feet, high into the realm of the ancestors.

Painting remains a lively interprise.  At it’s heart resides a fundamental paradox, an ambiguity that vexes–as well as propels– the effort to unify illusory,  representational space with the  “abstract” space of the picture plane.

I’m starting several large canvases all at once in hopes a theme will present itself.
The key is find right proportion between intent and accident.   This is Golden Proportion.

Here is the start of my next painting.   I am taking a different tack–laying down washes of color without preconceived ideas about content.  But what a painting’s subject is remains open to debate.  As Barnett Newman said, the subject of a painting is often confused with the objects represented in it.  This is another way of understanding content.

Here is a painting from mid-90’s. 
Setting up camp was part of the process of creating this painting. Tarpology is a fine art.

“Captain Lanyard is in the wheelhouse,” growled the filthy stoker of the Sameramis.

I climbed the ladder and was about to knock on the weathered, oak door when, through the blinds, came a low voice intoning: “It is thou, O river, who judges man’s judgment… O river of sanctuaries. ..O river of light…”

I opened the door and saw a tall man in long, black watch coat bent over a chart table reading, what appeared to be, clay tablets. Without turning he said: “What say ye, lad? Does the ocean refuse the river’s tribute?”

“Sir?”

He fell silent and gazed upon an arid, level plain broken only by an occasional rocky mound overgrown with dry grass. The sun was setting in a blaze of golden fire. The scorched landscape seemed, as foretold in the Gathas of Zoroaster, suddenly transfigured by the celestial Light of Glory.