New Work

(Click for large image).

Described as Arshile Gorky in 3-d, this is a very dark painting is interested in realism only for the mood that the classical techniques can create.

This canvas is actually older than the Iraq War, when it had a spatial structure of a double-barrel vault. I finished it last week.

This is a very hard painting to get a photo of, but you get a good sense of it here. The lighting is all honestly earned in oil.

There was no prepartory work- it's muscular modernism driven farther and father into illusion.

A couple of points- the original composition is still there. 90 percent of the work was in establishing the space, yet the dominant effects - the figurative, abstracted lines, fell into place in a few days. The clouds are wholly invented, with no original source - and I rather prefer the effect of their body-like shapes to the real thing.