I am 79 years old, recently retired from SCAD, where I taught English as a Second Language for 23 years. I did both BA and MA degrees at the University of Minnesota, then studied at the Art Students League of New York, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, and the Academy of Fine Arts in Carrara, Italy.
My artwork, whether sculpture, painting, or drawing, is not based on observation of the natural world. I have developed an iconography to represent the ideas and emotions I have had throughout my life, things I experience in dreams and daydreams that are important to me and that I try to communicate to others by making various objects.
The core image, of which I have made hundreds of variations, is a house with something inside it, usually a fish, a man, or both. Sometimes one is on the inside, one on the outside, occasionally with a woman. Sometimes the house, fish, and man are fused into one being. I often express what people are thinking by attaching something, a fish, house, bird, fist, etc., to the head, sometimes simply riding on top, sometimes emerging from inside, sometimes replacing an eye.
The human and fish forms, or shapes made by lines, are organic, while the house form or shape is geometric, creating a strong contrast that helps to express the essential difference, tension, and often a conflict between the natural world and the manmade world.
The fish are in movement, while the houses are static. Sometimes that relationship is intended to express entrapment, confinement, or limitation, yet other times the creatures seem playful or protected. There is both resistance and acceptance. Why? This tension and ambiguity are what make up my daily life.
Many paintings involve the sea as a whole, not just fish. In those images, the sea represents the unconscious mind, as the world above it, which is much more often seen, represents the conscious mind. In these images I try to reinforce that concept with a composition and colors that bring out an emotional response equal to the intellectual one.
