Here we go again folks. Ego, ego, ego. I come from a culture of self efacement and this whole idea makes me rather uncomfortable not to mention the sheer overload of stuff. But when one makes art, it is somehow natural to what to share it. I guess I would hope that this is part of the human exploration, of delving into that mystery and stirring it up with a hope of greater understanding, and in my ideal, a greater humanity. I think of my homeland and ache at our history and stupidity and it never seems to change. But this exploration is a compulsion that cannot be ignored.

This time we are communicating in the form of a "blog" because we are hoping that will stimulate the conversations I love so much. So please zap me with thoughts, comments, observations and rude remarks. Please be merciful with the latter. Not really, a good argument would be stimulating. I had a most amazing experience in Palm Springs a couple of weeks ago as guest of a remarkable couple I now count as friends. Another new friend met there, sent me a great book of art critism by John Updike in which he writes "For me, regressively enough, something broadly called "beauty" must attach to art, along with an aspiration to permanence." Thanks again for your ongoing interest.

Tank Corp, World War II (in progress)




He seemed very excited about sitting for me but was also terribly shy. He kept bursting into chuckles. Of course I realize the risk of painting a "cute" old man smiling his missing tooth, but that is true to the experience and worth the risk. Makes me think of Frans Hals. It also accentuates the minutes during which my friend and translator Vova, told he that while they were fighting in Hungary, their tank had been hit. He told us of the horror of the tank bursting into flames and how his comander saved him but was unable to save his other comrades who burned to death. He wept. As my father was in the same war, and one of my uncles was shot down over Holland and killed, it brought me a sense of connection that compelled me to paint him. I wept a little with him.




Dimitri (45 x 45 inches, oil on linen)




There was a grace, even an elegance of manner to this young man that made the custom of inviting him to dinner with us especially pleasant. His father was also a military man so I had the impression that the restaurant was not that big a deal to him, but the company pleased him. He ordered his food after rather a long wait for service and then as the delivery took more and more time we noticed him looking at his watch anxiously. Eventually before the food came, with some embarrassment, he said he would have to leave as he was scheduled to meet his younger brother at the railway station where the twelve year old would change trains as he travelled the enormous distance from the summer spent with his grandparents in the Crimea, home to Mormonsk in the north. We were disappointed for him. As we concluded our meal, he suddenly returned and breathlessly told us the train was two hours late so he could join us after all. He ate voraciously as we all talked, his warm eyes glowing with pleasure at being able to return. Experiences of a personal nature like this, plus the time spent while I draw from life really do inform the final work. No conscious decision can be made to accomplish this. It is, as I am sure I have said elsewhere in these pages, a process as mysterious as life itself.




Husbandry (36 x 36 inches, oil on canvas, in progress)



I set out to simply paint a piece of fruit which is a kind of pilgrimage to the wonder of nature I find myself wanting to make every now and then. The pear, a fruit I find endlessly interesting to paint, (Freudian?) was followed by the plum. But I found myself strangely uncertain about the painting until a shovel in the garden provoked me to include it in the work. As the loose abstract ingredients of t he form at the end of the blade coincidentally implied dripping water I remembered the experience of husbandry decades ago in Alpine, Utah, as my wife and I would irrigate our small orhard, pasture, flower gardens and lawn at all hours. The time was dictated by the shared rotation of the whole town, tiresome in the wee hours of the morning perhaps, but delightful in the heat of mid-summer's day, when sloshing through the chill of the mountaintop water was so refreshing as the work was intense and physical.