My foundational century, roughly 1870-1970, saw the emergence of new forms of narcissistic/pragmatic leadership, passive/reactive peasantry and psychological/aesthetic revolution. Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, Surrealist and Expressionist works of this period served as my early guides to a more direct experience of outer and inner worlds: Carl Jung’s organization of the individual in resistance to the collective neurosis of our time. My present focus is that region of the psyche in which meaning and emotion originate; specifically, on the border between abstract form and symbol.
EDUCATION
1982-2021
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Institutions: Western Washington University, Woodring College, Antioch College, various others: various degrees in art and education
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Guidance: Ted Lindberg (curator, critic, writer): mechanisms of academic/art establishment
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Guidance: Guy Anderson (painter): encouraged concentration on process painting
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Guidance: Max Benjamin (painter): demonstrated use of textural and tonal affinities across positive/negative spaces in bypassing reflexive motif identification
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Guidance: Anne McCracken (teacher, letterpress artist, wife of sculptor Phil McCracken): exploration of non-objective graphic experiments in woodcut printing
1972-1982
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Internship: Al King (illustrator, muralist, researcher, instructor: Art Center College of Design, associate of painter Gordon Onslow Ford): principles of illustration, aesthetic foundations of primal Chinese cultures, color theory (particularly the relationship of the Vedically comprehensive Munsell Color system and the reflex-based King system)
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Guidance: Mahmoud Baidun (antiques dealer, patriarch [Jerusalem]): identification of counterfeit artifacts and (generally) the use of markings of manufacture in reading the perspective and intention of the maker
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Guidance: Sir Arthur Edward Drummond Bliss (Master of the Queen’s Music, modernist composer, relative through Lady [cousin Trudy] Bliss): use of musical figures/artifacts (ethnic borrowings and my guitar improvisations) as receptacles for unacknowledged feelings and intimations
1967-1972
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Guidance: Julius Milstein (framer, painter): use of high-key archetypal forms overlaid with progressively nuanced greys corresponding to an increasingly muddled palette
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Guidance: Hal Silverman (art director, instructor: Art Center College of Design): Bauhaus rules: the German art school catalogue of involuntary human responses to graphic elements and compositions
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Guidance: Frank Baker (actor, writer, scholar of Australian aboriginal art, associate of director John Ford): persistent cultural continuity
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Internship: Dorothy Cannon (painter, educator): Ash Can school (art-for-life’s sake = meeting students where they are = conversance in myriad genres and media)
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Guidance: Sister Mary Corita Kent (artist, teacher, activist): digressions from expected results as integrations of conscious and unconscious intentions
1956-1967
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Internship: Dorothy Royer (painter, art instructor, art therapist, board member: Los Angeles County Museum of Art): development of visual grammar, principles of Jungian analysis, Socratic instruction in art theory and history, correlations of pre-Impressionist underpainting and later Surrealist/Expressionist works
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Guidance: Mary Frank (multimedia artist, mother of best friend, wife of photographer Robert Frank): archetypal lexicon, visual grammar, structural relationships of life and art
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Reflection: John Tortora (painter, friend of family): distinctions between active and passive responses to varied and combined genres
EXHIBITS AND OCCUPATIONS
1982-2021
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Teaching: Anacortes School District, Seattle School District, others
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Anacortes Youth Arts board
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Artist in residence; Anacortes School District
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Exhibited: Gallery Dei Gratia, La Conner
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Ebru (marbling/monotypes) shown in numerous venues including Bellevue Arts and Crafts Festival, Edmonds Arts Festival, L.A. County Art Museum, MoMa, Renwick Gallery at the Smithsonian, Chicago Art Institute
1972-1982
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Catalogue illustrations: Al King porcelains
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Organized numerous group shows in unconventional settings
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Bread-and-butter illustration
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Guest teacher: Los Angeles City Schools
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Teaching: Cannon Art Workshop
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Book arts projects presented in small-venue book stores
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Various commissioned works
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Activist street art: London
1967-1972
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Activist street art: Los Angeles
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Bread-and-butter illustration
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Organized numerous group shows in unconventional settings
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Solo show: Cannon workshop
1956-1967
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Commissions and small-venue exhibits
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Peer-to-peer teaching: Royer school
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One-man (boy) exhibit: Royer school
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Multimedia works, somewhat in the manner of Mary Frank, submitted in application to Royer school
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Cloudy sky (watercolor wash): from deconstruction of oil landscape by John Tortora: exhibited at father’s workplace