Rio Hondo Art Gallery

Opening Reception February 6th, 7pm

Artist Statement:
Travel has often provided the visual memories that initially lead me into a painting.
While the atmosphere and spirit of Mexico have always been inspirational to my work,
visits to Hong Kong have introduced me to new color and spatial sensations that continue to affect my work. As an abstractionist, the observations and memories may become submerged as the painting develops, but they resonate and continue to inform during the painting process.

My paintings are color structures of rectilinear forms. The initial surface divisions are
rescaled and adjusted as they fill with color, and this color development really becomes
the life of the painting. The work arrives at a resolution when the colors interact and
result in a spatial fusion.

Sometime in the late nineties the artist and curator, Late Bill Radawec, invited me to participate in a group show at Rio Hondo College. I had finished a group of Ball Paintings some years earlier, and asked him if I could place a ball in one of the gallery walls with the intent to bury it at the end of the show. Subversively, I had turned the entire gallery wall and everything on it into my painting. When Robert Miller invited me to have a show this year, I thought excavating the buried ball would be appropriate. I wanted to explore beyond my own excavation and have invited others to address the subject. Included in the exhibit are Melissa Huddleston, Karen Lee Williams, Benjamin Lord, Nicole Seisler, Jeffrey Valance, Mehran Ayati and HK Zamani.