"Venetian Dream" the title of my upcoming exhibition at Brian Gross Fine Art, refers to a dream that I had on my first night in Venice in the spring of 2009.
In the dream a picture appeared of how to begin a drawing. The rule was so simple yet compelling. A spiral like structure was built with a series of dashes beginning with one dash, then at a right angle 2 dashes, another right angle three dashes and so on.
The next morning I began the first of several 7"x5" pencil drawings exactly as I had dreamt it. Intuitively I understood that being in Venice, a place so wondrously and luminously expansive, was what led to the dream. The very unfurling suggested in the rule was a metaphor for a soaring of my artistic vision.
I returned to the studio after my Venetian vacation and began making larger works on paper and small paintings on linen. I found that the rhythm and harmonies that occurred were less predictable, and that I was able to push the boundaries of what I thought was a balanced composition.
My work has always been about building, allowing each rule to suggest the next rule with a sort of non-thinking, like a spider making a web, or a bird making a nest, realizing that I know nothing.
