Working on one of my paintings this evening, it strikes me that my work is not primarily about balancing abstraction with realism. My work is now, and always has been, about melding my subjective reality with an objective reality that we all, more or less, share. It's the old dichotomy between Abstract Expressionism and Pop. The language of Abstract Expressionism was personal and subjective. Pop presented a communal language. Pop tried to be even more objective than our shared values by removing the familiar color from our flag, for instance. Or making a taken-for-granted object so large we have to consider it for the first time. Or repeating a representation of an icon so many times it becomes as strange and new as Hobbes' mantra of the word "smock."
The best Abstract Expression has always utilized universal qualities in shape, color, and rhythm. And the best Pop art has always relied upon the artist's stylistic choices. In my work, I reconfigure a dead-pan representation of people and places using techniques that make them new and strange. In this way, I accept the job the poet is licensed to perform, taking the liberty of imposing my own colors and textures onto the renderings, rearranging them as I see fit. In doing so, I believe my work is trending with changes in the art world that seek to bring some consensus to the AbEx versus Pop dichotomy.
