LATEST ARTWORKS
All of my latest artworks will always be published here first and later moved to my Collection of Available Series and Works page.
To receive periodic email notices regarding the newest Latest Artworks, please send your full name and email to the artist at creativity_in_the_making@outlook.com
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"WHO WEARS THE PANTS?" SERIES
It's an old question, suggesting that an attempted challenge to "machista"/male dominance is being confronted/defended by a male chauvinist. Although the question can, quixotically, still arise in today's more politically correct environments, "who wears the pants" is now more a fashion statement than the initiation of a political polemic about male supremacy in advanced contemporary societies. Either way, this amusing parodic series plays on the ambiguity.
The visualizations below are part of the "Who Wears The Pants?" series.
WHO WEARS THE PANTS? NO. 1
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WHO WEARS THE PANTS? NO. 2
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WHO WEARS THE PANTS? NO. 3
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WHO WEARS THE PANTS? NO. 4
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WHO WEARS THE PANTS? NO. 5
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WHO WEARS THE PANTS? NO. 6
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WHO WEARS THE PANTS? NO. 7
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WHO WEARS THE PANTS? NO. 8
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WHO WEARS THE PANTS? NO. 9
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WHO WEARS THE PANTS? NO. 10
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WHO WEARS THE PANTS? NO. 11
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WHO WEARS THE PANTS? NO. 12
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WHO WEARS THE PANTS? NO. 13
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Although Michelangelo Buonarroti never married, he maintained a close and deep (it is said "platonic") relationship with the widowed noblewoman Vittoria Colonna, who was also known as a poet in her own right. Seventeen years her senior, he once called her "the soul and the heart of my fragile life." Interestingly, he never painted her portrait, instead leaving us only a rough sketch. What kept him from capturing her, either in the flesh or in spirit, during or after their dozen-year friendship?
Details of his sketch and painted portraits by Girolamo Muziano and Sebastiano Luciani provided the source material for this digital collage.
The visualization below is part of the Digital Collage series.
DETAIL OF MICHELANGELO'S SKETCH OF HIS PLATONIC POETIC MUSE
(12.5X22")
Michelangelo Buonarroti was known by the nickname "Il Divino" in his own time and even now, given the astonishing perfection of his works. He was indeed one of a few defining creative geniuses of the Italian High Renaissance and his most memorable and powerful works such as the David, the Vatican Pietà, Moses, and the many frescoes on the ceiling and one altar wall of the Sistine Chapel (to name only a few of his masterpieces) resonate with us to this day.
The visualization below, a study for an intended bronze sculpture, is based on a casting of Michelangelo's death mask and is part of the Art Heads series. Why five heads? In how many arts did Il Divino excel?
IL DIVINO -- A STUDY FOR A BRONZE SCULPTURE
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Robert Frost's poem "Fire and Ice" was published in 1920: "Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate to say that for destruction ice is also great and would suffice."
Slightly more than a century later, we can acknowledge that the ice caps are irretrievably liquifying, and numberless species are being erased. The landscape is changing/degrading before our eyes, and, like submissive lambs being shorn, we are acquiescing in our own collective holocaust.
This visualization is part of the Abstractions series.
FROST WAS RIGHT: WE'RE COOKED
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NEBULOSITY SERIES
Among the wondrous manifestations of our earthly landscape, perhaps none other are more spectacular and awesome than those infinitely pliable majestic puffs of water vapor and dust known as clouds.
Just think how impoverished our day-to-day experience would be without their fascinating ever-changing presence!
And, of course, the sky is their transparent insubstantial medium against which those nebular dramas are inexorably choreographed.
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CELESTIAL MONOCHROME
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A BARK FROM THE BLUE
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IS IT A WHIRLPOOL OR A GALAXY OF CLOUDS?
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"BUT, LOOK, THE MORN, IN RUSSET MANTLE CLAD . . . "
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For the most part, we have not been raised to know and understand that we are all part of and inhabit a living ecosystem. Is it any wonder that we have adopted life styles that are a veritable disconnect, and a heedlessly destructive one at that? Is it a priority of our consciousness that many animal species are becoming extinct on "our watch"?
Do we need to be reminded of this? Indeed, we do, because just going along or normalizing ignorance is what complicity looks like. And that is no viable alternative for the ecosystem, now or for the future.
This visualization is part of the Abstractions series.
OCEANIC PROFUSION
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Let this be the legacy and tombstone of Li Peng, the then Chinese premier who ordered and oversaw the massacre of pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square and elsewhere on June 4, 1989 and thereafter.
What the totalitarian regime in mainland China proved to the world that it is capable of doing to its own people is a threat to all people who prefer and demand democracy instead of the rule of unaccountable might and absolute state control.
This poster image is part of the Prosecutorial Portraits series.
LI PENG'S MEMORIAL
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America began a new chapter on the 1st day of this new year 2022. And I began it with a question: will black people and other people of color continue to be America's "moving targets"?
Are they merely "shooting ducks" for badged and unbadged bigotry? We'll have an answer soon enough, as days come and go in this most racially supremacist and ethnically violent of nations.
The visualization below is part of a set of images in the Politics and Struggle series.
MOVING TARGETS
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Origins! We are such explorers of beginnings of things -- the underlying premise being that where something began will illuminate the present. But what if there is no beginning of everything, what if a beginningless past is the ultimate reality, then what? Can we live with that?
This visualization is part of the Abstractions series.
AND IN THE BEGINNING . . . ? ?
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Robert Rauschenberg once declared that "Anything that can reflect light is of some interest."
And, indeed, I would add the corollary that a visual artist only exists for those who can see, both physically and metaphysically.
The subject matter of creation is a perception, conception, or sensation that animates a cascade of inspired activity. In visual art, its manifestation is in some respect formal, whether concrete, amorphous or pleomorphic. Of course, our sensual awareness of a work can be a source of delight, surprise, or a host of frustrations and disappointments. We all know this because those encompass the range of our responses to other sensuous experiences, whether they be acoustic, olfactory, tactile, or gastronomic.
The following visualization arises precisely from the foregoing considerations, and is part of the Lost and Found series.
IN_FORMATION
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We have seen how Andy Warhol's face has undergone various transformations over time, and this is most evident in the various photos capturing his look at different stages of his life.
Some years ago, it occurred to me that depicting him polychromatically in a manner similar to his multicolored approach to celebrity portraiture, but doing it while he was still a boy, would at least be a fun experiment. Ah, but how to do the master colorist justice?
This quad view is part of the Art Heads series.
ANDY BOY ALLA ANDY
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Gian Lorenzo Bernini was the originator and unsurpassed master Baroque sculptor of his age, let alone of any age thereafter. Although also known as a magnificent architect and painter, perhaps his single most popularly-recognized sculptural tour de force is "The Ecstacy of St. Teresa of Ávila."
His unmatched depiction and stunningly realistic sensuous portrayal of transported ecstacy in a religious figure is an awesome aesthetic and psychological achievement of singular artistic virtuosity.
Given this masterpiece's wide renown, I have included my tribute below as part of the Celeb-Art series.
ECSTACY TO THE THIRD POWER
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Language is our tool for attempting to communicate precisely with agreed upon symbols and meanings. And yet there is a realm in which words swim in ambiguity, even when tersely uttered, as the title of the following image demonstrates.
Can we agree on any one of several possible meanings? I doubt it.
And for this reason it "earns" its place as part of the Abstractions series.
I LOVE YOU PURPLE
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From this angle, this signature Parisian landmark never looked more intriguing.
The following somewhat abstract image is part of the Impressions series.
RIVETING HEIGHTS
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It would be such a simple world if "competing for the gold" were merely a matter of Olympic athletic prowess, instead of enterprise greed. This reminds us of the song from the musical "Cabaret": "Money Makes the World Go Around." But apart from the obnoxious and patently invidious jingoism of celebrating which country has the most medals, among the athletes there is a more personal appreciation and admiration of what it physically and emotionally takes for fellow competitors to earn a medal of recognition.
For this reason, "winners" and "losers" can give each other a "high five" as brothers and sisters in their respective contests of personal endurance and achievement.
The following abstract image celebrates that mutual spirit of sportsmanship, and is part of the Abstractions series.
HIGH FIVE FOR THE GOLD
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When famed American artist Robert Rauschenberg grew weary of the art scene in New York City, he permanently moved his home to a remote island in Florida, called Captiva, on the Gulf of Mexico, where he spent the last four decades of his life.
Among the 20 acres and several buildings he eventually acquired on Captiva was the 1942 structure known as the Fish House, built by the prize-winning editorial cartoonist and conservationist Jay Norwood (J.N. "Ding") Darling, who reportedly used it as a studio.
Rauschenberg died on Captiva in 2008 and his ashes were dispersed near the Fish House.
The impressionistic visualization below of a portion of this "found" structure is my graphic epitaph to this latter-day stellar exponent of found objects, and is part of the Abstractions series. The second image is an abstraction of an abstraction.
IMPRESSION: SUNSET AT THE FISH HOUSE
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AT THE FISH HOUSE DETAIL
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It's a question without just a single answer-- talk about open-ended! Who is being asked, where, when, why, and under what circumstances? Is the context physical or metaphysical, terrestrial or cosmic, personal or impersonal, expected or unexpected, welcome or intrusive?
Imagery that poses a question seeks engagement with a viewer, an answer, if you will, and thereby "earns" whatever attention it gets.
The following visualization is part of the Abstractions series.
WHAT'S UP?
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Either it has happened to us in real life or in our dreams, or we've felt it vicariously when it has happened to someone we know or know about, or even when we have seen it happen to some living creature. It is a primal, existential, gripping moment, which has prompted at least one philosopher/dramatist to write a play about it: the desperation and impotence of being trapped, with no way out.
The following visualization is part of the Abstractions series.
CAUGHT, NO EXIT
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As noted elsewhere in this website, finding image B in image A is one of my fascinations. The following visualization is an apt example of finding abstraction through extraction, and is part of the Abstractions series.
FORMS IN FREE FALL
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MESSAGES SERIES
Perhaps you've experienced one or several of the following interactions or confrontations, where what is said and the facial language involved "catalyze," whether as stimulus or response.
The messages in words are distinct and are clearly manifested/reflected in the images, or so it seems. Yet what we see at a deeper level of perception is how the depicted image (yes, singular) is actually "adjusting" in significance to the verbal context of each title and thereby deriving its meaning. Enjoy this exploration.
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RAISING CONSCIOUSNESS
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DON'T LISTEN TO "KAREN": FAUCI, FAUCI, FAUCI!
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"BUT YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO REPRESENT US!"
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'VOTE BLUE, NO MATTER WHO!" YEAH,YEAH.
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"BLACK LIVES MATTER!"
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"YOU'RE NOT EVEN LISTENING. WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO, YELL?"
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"LOOK, YOU'VE WAITED THIS LONG. CAN'T YOU WAIT A LITTLE LONGER?"
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"AMERICA FIRST, AMERICA FIRST!" OH PLEASE, DON'T JINGO ME.
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BLACK & WHITE SERIES
While failed encounters of the racist kind remain a hallmark of American life, I would like to believe that a parallel reality is that many, perhaps most, Americans have rejected and overcome the mental shackle of bigotry in their day-to-day dealings with their fellow citizens.
It was a welcome sight in 2020 to see the spurious "heroic" icons of asinine Confederate bigotry pulled down in many cities across the land. The repudiation of a murderously racist insurrection and its leaders was due very long ago. Gone may be some ignoble statues and monuments, but the psychological landscape too needs to be purged of misbegotten yet ingrained supremacist beliefs and attitudes that haunt the American psyche like atavistic ghosts
__________
The great humanist, scholar, and activist, Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois, began his most famous work, The Souls of Black Folk, by boldly declaring that "the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line." But the twin realities of racial prejudice and discrimination, whether as the result of ethnic, racial, tribal, or national supremacy, have been abiding global inhumanities in the history of humanity for many more centuries than the Twentieth.
And, indeed, that the cry of "Black Lives Matter" has to be heard even in the Twenty-First Century is a testament to the perniciously persistent legacy of bigotry and prejudice that has stained and twisted the consciousness of uncounted millions, both here and abroad.
The following visualization is part of the Black & White series.
THE PROBLEM IN ANY CENTURY IS THE ENDURING PROBLEM OF THE COLOR-LINE
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Indeed, the color line is the "great mental divide" showing us where ignorance persists between groups of people. That fundamental divide has many manifestations of increasing convolution and subtlety, yet, at bottom, it is all the same when stripped of its twists and turns, as the following sequence of four (of six) visualizations symbolizes, as part of the Black & White series.
THE DIVIDE VI
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THE DIVIDE IV
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THE DIVIDE II
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THE DIVIDE
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Separatism is spawned in a mental ghetto. When coupled with the experience of living in an enclave neighborhood, it forms the virtual wall of separation that plays out in daily life. No doubt, the insular mind is a cheated mind that suffers from the partiality and distortion of ignorance.
We can pity the ignorant but must be wary of their ignorance for out of it emanates the miasmal stench of separatism and worse.
We must remain aware that actual separation is only a matter of degrees, and not a difference in kind.
The following visualization is part of the Black & White series.
SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION
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For those of us without the "original sin" of bigotry (or for those who have overcome it), the challenge before us is the question "quo vadis" ("where are you going"); it is the test of how to proceed in society and interpersonally as a worthy example for others.
Racial equality (as with ethnic equality) can be a goal in the future or a state of mind in the present. In either case, the visualization below significantly asks: "now what?" (or stated differently, "where do we go from here?"), and is part of the Black & White series.
WE'VE COME A LONG WAY -- NOW WHAT?
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His creativity in drawing helped him make his mark in the product-related illustrative world of commercial art in the capital city of advertising: New York. This was long before making his own persona into an "illustrative product" in its own right.
Perhaps my ink-on-paper drawing below is what a street artist might have created upon catching Warhol at an earlier point in his flamboyant course toward stardom. The additional image/variation below it is perhaps what that same street artist might have elaborated back in his studio with more time and inspiration.
Both images are part of the Art Heads series.
ANDY: PORTRAIT À MAIN LEVÉE
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ANDY: PORTRAIT À MAIN LEVÉE V1
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The year was 1957 when Columbia Records released the recording "Miles Ahead," a most fortuitous seminal collaboration between arranger Gil Evans and the jazz trumpet player, who would become my inspiration in taking up the trumpet as my instrument, Miles Davis. As a loyal devotee ever since of this unique musical explorer, I collected numerous vinyl recordings of Miles Davis's artistic trajectory as an ever-evolving contemporary musical presence.
But as happens with "stars in the constellation," this fan lived to see his favorite light flicker and dim for some time before Miles played his last note. Fortunately for us, his recorded legacy remains as alive and vibrant today as when it was produced, disc after disc, over the course of more than four decades.
My explicitly-transformative posthumous memorial tribute to Miles Davis below, on the thirtieth anniversary year of his passing in 1991, not only expresses my sense of loss of a personal musical hero, but also uniquely adds a new solemnly-respectful image of Miles Davis in death that is in marked contrast to the existing catalogue of various other commercial depictions of that magnetically attractive physiognomy while he lived.
Click on the following link to hear Miles in a superlative interpretation with Gil Evans of George Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess" classic: "My Man's Gone Now." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MUaf0pNNJ4
[Note: although this commemorative image is part of my Celeb-Art series, it is not available for private acquisition or commercial reproduction or use of any kind.]
MY MAN'S GONE NOW
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N.F.S.
Every holocaust perpetrates the vicious penetration and defilement of human vulnerability. Whether instantaneously or gradually over time, a unilaterally oppressive life-extinguishing force destroys an animate preciousness that it is incapable of creating.
The madness of Thanatos unleashed knows no quarter. Its devastating impetus is designed to crush all opposition and resistance. How many times have we seen or been touched by it? There are always those who experience it first hand, and those who only hear about it from others. It is either exploding in our faces or rending our hearts.
But, don't we realize that those hands against the wall are, each and every time, always our hands?
This image is part of a new series entitled Holocausts.
HANDS AGAINST THE WALL
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"For whom the bell tolls" is the archetypal phrase recalling our common humanity without distinctions. And yet the world seems to have a built-in delay mechanism in its acknowledgment of violations of such common humanity that, over and over again, allows and gives time to the violators to wreak their horrors on their victims.
In the end, pillars and tablets of mute remembrance populate fields of nature, as if somehow those geometric stone markers were sufficient and fitting acknowledgments (expiations?) by the world that grievous wrongs against innocents were committed and were allowed.
This visualization is part of the Holocausts series.
THE GEOMETRY OF GENOCIDE -- AFTER THE WORLD HAS AWAKENED
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They look expectantly at us, truly giving us an anxious "parting look," as if to say "Now, don't you forget us!"
No, how can we forget you who disappeared in ashes and smoke, a horrible ending of lives taken before their time!
This image is part of the Holocausts series.
DON'T FORGET US!
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These Armenian orphans were the "children" of the genocidal campaign that was waged by the Ottoman regime against the Christian Armenian population living under its control near the early part of the last century. Orphans, refugees, and broken bodies -- those are always the foreseeable "progeny" of crimes against humanity.
This image is part of the Holocausts series.
THE CHILDREN OF GENOCIDE
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Do not speak to us of honor, freedom, and peace in the conduct of war -- you cannot place garlands on the beast of calamitous mayhem. Uniforms, medals, and tributes mean nothing more than the ashes of death and destruction cast to the wind.
War is the unleashing of cravenly criminal instincts against the defenseless.
This visualization is part of the Holocausts series.
COURAGE, HONOR, AND BRAVERY "IMMEASURABLE" -- BUSHIDO NO MORE!
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Every war is a holocaust. America's longest war, before the protracted fiasco in Afghanistan, was Vietnam. It was a might-makes-right delusion, under five presidential administrations, unparalleled before then in its enormity and folly, that began to open the eyes of Americans to how their government's mendacity and propaganda led to the needless slaughter of innocents and the gullible in a distant Asian land that is today just another U.S. trading partner, regardless of the politics.
Racist genocidal atrocities were committed with impunity in Vietnam and the "perpetrators-in-chief," with the exception of J.F.K., died in their beds as free men.
This visualization is part of the Holocausts series.
WAR ITSELF IS THE ATROCITY
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This poignant, haunting, latest image is part of the Global Conscience series.
HOW WILL THE EYES OF CHILDREN JUDGE US? #8
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Ecocide is the singular self-inflicted catastrophe of our age brought to us by the unsurpassed egocentric greed of fossil-fuel oligarchs the world over. The unstoppable ruin of all has been achieved by the mindless pursuit of short-term gains at the long-term expense of everything else. Too few of us have made our voices heard and our elected representatives have led us to a point of no return.
Humanity's safe harbors and shores are vanishing in real time beneath a black rising sea of petroleum. Our collective impotence has lost our chance to prevent it.
This image could well serve as a tombstone for our civilization, and is part of the Planet Apocalypse series.
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VANISHING SHORELINES
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A foreshortened sense of what is possible is a symptom of one's being stuck. Both creative and non-creative minds know the experience. But, as many may come to realize sooner or later, nothing happens unless something happens or unless we make a move.
Whether slightly or significantly, a change in perspective can "jump start the engine" and off we go again. The following set of four variations arose in just such a fashion, as chromatic explorations of what is possible to visualize within a defined conception.
The set is part of the Abstractions series.
NEW HORIZONS I
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NEW HORIZONS II
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NEW HORIZONS III
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NEW HORIZONS IV
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So much of art is imitative of natural phenomena. Homo faber often takes his/her cues from forms ready-made and seeks to make improvements and even abstract elaborations, Thus, homo faber can aspire to become homo creator. And, why not? Indeed, having created deities, why not continue creating?
The following image is part of the Abstractions series.
ECHOICS
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We know he had "a thing" for stars ever since he was a child-collector of movie-stars' publicity/fan photos. Later, as an established artist, not only did he mix and mingle among many star celebrities of his day, but he created a body of work that placed an artistic spotlight on them, and on those who sought to mimic and pretend to be like them by having portraits made of themselves by the star portraitist of stars.
He also enjoyed being a star in his own right and even dressed up as such for his own amusement. As he once put it: "Fashion wasn't what you wore someplace anymore; it was the whole reason for going." I think he would have enjoyed this spoofy, parodic visualization of his self-possessed singularity, echoing an earlier memorable parody of another artistically self-possessed prominent presence.
It is part of the Art Heads series.
ANDY À LA MANIERE DE BALZAC DE RODIN -- A PRELIMINARY STUDY FOR A SCULPTURE
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What will it feel like when it's over? Rather than dwell on the worldwide horror we are now experiencing, I'm looking to a future without the pandemic as a devastating daily reality. The global catastrophe of World War II lasted years, and its conclusion was a true cause for jubilation. And, like many around the world, I too want to feel the jubilation of finally being "in the clear." But can we really be in the clear without turning a blind eye and deaf ear to the other ongoing catastrophes and humanitarian crises around the world? In short, can we ever be "in the clear, at last"? Doesn't it depend upon how wide is the scope of our concerns?
This image forms part of the Abstractions series.
IN THE CLEAR, AT LAST?
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In the venal corporate environment that we inhabit, there is one overriding imperative: that the operation, regardless of whatever else, show a substantial profit. Of course, there's an internal logic to the imperative, since every component of the operation is continuously monitored and measured by its cost, and, at the end of the consolidated accounting, there is always a "bottom line."
Perhaps too appealingly expressed, the following abstraction in form and structure distills the underlying essence of the imperative.
It forms part of the Abstractions series.
AHH, THAT BOTTOM LINE!
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Piet Mondrian's legacy is synonymous with the geometrics of color. The early Twentieth-century Dutch aesthetic movement De Stijl (which he co-founded) extended and popularized Mondrian's immortal chromatic geometries as well as the similar explorations of other Dutch artists in art, architecture, interior design, clothing, and furniture design.
But although he was one of the great innovative artists and theoreticians of his time, it remains one of the poignant ironies of iconic image-making that Mondrian died in poverty, despite his signature contributions to our visual world.
The following images are three of a set of thirteen variations entitled "Homage to Mondrian" (or "Variations: Large, Medium, and Small") and are part of the GeoMetrics series.
HOMAGE À MONDRIAN
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HOMAGE À MONDRIAN VII
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HOMAGE À MONDRIAN
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HOMAGE À MONDRIAN VII
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HOMAGE À MONDRIAN VI
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In the realm of the abstract we can find just about anything, as many of my works and certainly the works of many others demonstrate. As each successive era develops its own inventions and vocabularies, the abstract mind can extract or imagine "what's new" in our world and express it as a digital design.
The four visualizations below are part of the Abstractions series.
STREAMING VIDEO
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IT IS SOMETIMES BLACK AND WHITE
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2 FOR T AND T FOR TWO
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HIGH-RISE JITTERS
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WATERCOLORS SERIES
Unlike my other series, my latest Watercolors series is a chromatic and design departure in which use of a color wash effect is the idiom of expression. Without employing any straight lines, the irregular outlines and curves of nature are the marking language of this pastel-like digital watercolor imagery.
The following four visualizations are part of this series.
MORNING'S GOLDEN ROUGE
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THE AUTUMN LEAVES
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DAPHNIS AND CHLOE
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A SPRING FOR PEACH BLOSSOMS
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"Amapola, my pretty little poppy . . . " goes the lyric to the vintage song by José María Lacalle García as popularized by Jimmy Dorsey. And while this poppy's natural charm can inspire a song, it's darker potential can inspire an uncommon image seen only on a wall or in one's mind.
My visualization below is part of the Lost and Found series.
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AMAPOLA'S SECRET ESSENCE
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In Act 2, Scene 2, of Shakespeare's timeless Romeo and Juliet, we hear Juliet musing to herself on her balcony that "A rose by any other name smells just as sweet," as she questions the significance that Romeo is a Montague. The meanings we attach to things can be as ambiguous as the colors we assign to them. And so, what matters if a rose is red or some other color?
The following two visualizations are from a set of variations that are part of the Lost and Found series.
A ROSE BY ANY OTHER COLOR (VIOLET)
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A ROSE BY ANY OTHER COLOR (PINK)
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Unlike individual atoms, biological organisms get old and die. It's called senescence, and all our ancestors have experienced it, and we are in the process of experiencing it day by day. Within our lifetime, we witness many organisms senesce, but among such organisms, perhaps flowers are the most emblematic of such aging. From bud to fallen petal, they epitomize the passage of time, from beginning to end.
We can become fascinated with the transition, for it metaphorically embodies an analogy for our lives. You see, despite a common ineluctable conclusion, we can learn something meaningful from the "logic of flowers" in that they bloom indifferent to their fate.
This visualization is part of the Lost and Found series.
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THE RESENESCENCE OF THE ROSE
(20x30" - SCALABLE)
The mystery of the unknown is the secret of its allure. While we search, we pursue what we think may sooner or later be within reach. And in such quest we confront the challenge of the elusive rare find, which may be discovered in the real world or only in the realm of the imagination.
This "rare find" below is part of the Lost and Found series.
THE ALLURE OF JASMIN NOIR
(38x40" - SCALABLE)
The profoundly influential Italian Baroque painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, known for his dramatic signature chiaroscuro portrayals, died from unascertained causes on July 18, 1610, at the age of 38.
This image is part of the Death Of An Artist series.
L'USCITA DI CARAVAGGIO
(34x30" - SCALABLE)
While it may be true that we can do things to improve our memory, it yet remains a fact that we forget more than what we have learned. Despite our valiant, though futile, efforts to remember and preserve for ready access and/or future reference, so much seeps into amnesia.
The following set of four paintings, for me, captures metaphorically the almost Sisyphean challenge of trying not to forget. You can test this for yourself by looking carefully at these four images, then closing your eyes and trying to recreate them in your mind's eye.
The set is part of the GeoMetrics series.
NON DIMENTICAR NO. 1
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NON DIMENTICAR NO. 2
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NON DIMENTICAR NO. 3
(30x60" - SCALABLE)
NON DIMENTICAR NO. 4
(30x60" - SCALABLE)
On Halloween, we wear masks not just to hide our identity, but to play at creating fright by confronting others with the seemingly unknown and anonymous. We delight in mimicking the grotesque or mysterious, and thereby liberate our spirits from known or fixed identities to explore the possible, the fanciful, or the fantastic.
Another Halloween is always approaching to make us drunk with imagination.
This visualization will be part of my Grotesques series.
HALLOWEEN SPIRITS
(32x54" - SCALABLE)
The famed French photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson, became known for capturing precisely-timed life moments at their optimal expressive maturity. He coined the expression "the decisive moment" to describe this genre of candid photographic image-making in which perception and the moment are merged with the click of a shutter.
In decision-making, all of us are more or less aware of a "right moment" to do or say, or not do or say, one thing or another. Sometimes we catch the moment or miss it, and we feel and respond so differently in either case. Of course, there's nothing inherently good or bad in catching or missing per se since it all depends on what's at stake, and whether catching or missing can lead to regret or fulfillment.
The following visualization is part of the Digital Collage series.
LIGHTS AT THE CROSSROADS: CAUTION, STOP, GO
(40x72" - SCALABLE)
When viewed from space, we know there are no such things as national boundaries. While we may inhabit a specific spot on earth, we are, in a transcendent sense, denizens without borders, unless we choose (or are compelled) to be confined and nationally defined.
The life of the planet does not recognize or need any such boundaries and proceeds to express itself transnationally. We are living in a very uneasy relationship to that global existence, and seem to live as the captives of self-serving corporate prerogatives and imperatives. The myopic captains of industrial greed rule and define our relationships to each other and to the world, and even the life of the planet is a hostage.
Climate change and global warming are the existential threats of our age, and the planet is responding accordingly.
The image below is another in a continuing series of epitaphs to life as we know it, and is part of the Planet Apocalypse series.
INCANDESCENT
(24x54" - SCALABLE)
Human consciousness is the stage on which the puzzlements of life are contemplated and sometimes resolved. The ambiguous results when perception and apperception are confused or entwined and certainty becomes elusive or illusionary. This can occur in any number of different life settings and can lead to error or to imaginative recreation or play. In art we can recognize and exploit the possibilities of the seemingly uncertain, and this becomes another source of inspiration or illumination.
As artists, we learn to make lemonade.
The following three images are examples and are part of the Lost and Found series.
UNCERTAINTY
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IN THE MIND OF THE BEHOLDER
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STRING THEORY
(40x34" - SCALABLE)
Sooner or later, every generation of visual artists becomes acquainted with the exquisite artistry of Rembrandt van Rijn. Although there is no shortage of artists whose mastery has been singularly outstanding, in Rembrandt we find such a breadth of masterful application that no one can deny his prominence as one of the greatest of the great that the world has ever seen.
Since perhaps no other portraitist has provided a more prolific chronicle of evolving self-portraits, I chose to "remaster" (update, as it were) one of them as my tribute to the great Dutch master.
The image below is part of the Art Heads series.
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REMASTERING RvR'S SELF-PORTRAIT
(28x40" - SCALABLE)
My "West Side Story" began in the immediate aftermath of World War II on a lower-working-class street block in mid-Manhattan. In fact, it was the very street and block where the movie "West Side Story" was filmed. There, I learned from my non-Hispanic "peers" the meaning of brutally-painful ethnic animus at the end of their fists. It was literally pounded into me as a five-year-old monolingual Spanish-speaking child. Of course, it was all so overwhelming and incomprehensible to me because I did not yet realize then that their assaults were the result of their malformed consciousness, their ignorance, and their home-grown conditioning in bigotry. My unspoken question then was only "Why did the boys in the 'neighborhood' (who were total strangers to me) turn me into their punching bag?"
Later on in life, as a survivor, I felt very glad that they never allowed me to become "one of them." And that has made all the difference in so many ways.
The autobiographical collage below of my early-childhood encounter with ethnic bigotry and the failure of society's adults to deal with, let alone prevent, it is part of the Life Scenes series.
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POW -- YOU DON'T BELONG HERE!
(42x60" - SCALABLE)
Meaningful chalk-line cartoon-like figurations are Keith Haring's legacy to visual literacy in contemporary art. We immediately recognize the aesthetic when we see it, and know whom to credit.
But mixing aesthetics is a creative exploration commonly indulged in by artists. While Haring admirably used his chalk outlines to convey a multiplicity of messaging, both social and political, the chalk-line aesthetic can become embedded simply as a design element within a broader abstract concept without any intended message or meaning.
The following geometrically abstract visualization does just that, while at the same time nodding an acknowledgment in its title to an esteemed predecessor image maker.
The work below is part of the GeoMetrics series, and could just as easily be included as part of the Abstractions series.
THE GEOMETRY OF ABSTRACTION -- A HOMAGE TO KEITH HARING
(30x60" - SCALABLE)
A MEDITATION ON WHAT MATTERS MOST
(56x32" - SCALABLE)
What we choose to believe in makes all the difference in our own world. If there's such a thing as making a mistake in this regard, then that must give all of us pause because it means that merely choosing can be fallible and we can choose to believe a falsehood. By what measure, then, can we feel confident in making a choice? In the True Buddhism of Nichiren Daishonin (Nichiren Shoshu), the touchstone is the Supreme Mystic Law of Cause and Effect.
The following "meditation" is part of the Abstractions series.
As artists, we have a penchant for "bringing you (the viewer) along for the ride." We are masters of ceremonies in the realm of the imagination and we enjoy offering a mental tease as a communicative experience for your consumption and delight or perplexion.
The following offering is -- yes, you guessed it -- part of the Abstractions series.
INTRODUCING A HINT OF THE BIZARRE
(32x40" - SCALABLE)
In the wake of the horrors of World War II in Europe, the Nuremburg Trials in Germany were a post-war reckoning for the barbarity and evil of heinous state criminality. Of those war criminals who were taken into custody, and tried and convicted, Hermann Göring and Rudolph Hess were among the very highest-level Nazi defendants. Göring eventually eluded punishment by committing suicide while in custody, and Hess hung himself in 1987 at the age of 93, after serving 40 years of a life sentence in Spandau prison for committing crimes against peace. Neither of these Nazis ever expressed any remorse or regret for their wrongful acts.
Each of us has a choice to make about how our life may have a value and significance for humanity.
The visualization below is part of the Prosecutorial Portraits series.
GÖRING AND HESS -- THE WORTHLESS LIVES OF THE IMPENITENT
(26x36" - SCALABLE)
N.F.S.
Consider this: because we know that all things temporal are ephemeral and will someday come to an end, we can accept right now that what innovatively-inventive German artist Joseph Beuys presciently declared will one day be true. 2021 is the centennial year of his birth.
The following poster and the haunting image below it are part of the Art Heads series.
ART IN THE PASSAGE AND FLUX OF TIME
(26x40" - SCALABLE)
N.F.S.
THESE EYES HAVE SEEN THE ABYSS
(36x36" - SCALABLE)
N.F.S.
Just about everything looks different, depending on one's perspective. Akira Kurosawa's film classic "Rashomon" is an apt dramatized example of this truism.
But what about a graphic example? If we superimpose colors and shapes in a collective "sandwich" of perspectives, we might visualize it as shown below, which is part of the Abstractions series.
PONDERING "RASHOMON"
(24x36" - SCALABLE)
The impulsive automatism of the doodle in one take can express more than intended. Reconsidered, it can reveal a narrative of reality or the imagination, if one has the eyes to find what is there. As with my "MacroCosm" series, there's often more than meets the eye.
The following doodles are part of the Abstractions series though figuratively rendered.
INNER-CITY BLUES
(25x20" - SCALABLE)
ENCOUNTERS OF THE STRANGE KIND
(26x36" - SCALABLE)
The mind of the clown fascinates us because, among other things, it is captivated by ephemeral frivolities -- not unlike us. That's a distractibility we share in common, and why not? Do we not harbor a clown within? Humankind is not known for its abiding wisdom, but more for its abiding folly. It is as if we are consistent in being inconsistent much of the time. Again we are distractible, and anything from the sublime to the inconsequential can give us pause. Are we so different then from that figure depicted here?
This realization is part of the Abstractions series.
LISTENING TO THE MUSIC OF THE NIGHT
(36x24" - SCALABLE)
The human form, like other objects, is an inexhaustible source of inspiration and is perhaps even more engaging due to its inseparably erotic potential. With the three iterative images below and the two that follow, I am beginning a new series, entitled Études En Form (Studies In Form).
This free-hand/free-form imagery explores dynamic contrasts seen only in one's imagination and only roughly approximated digitally in two dimensions. The energy and tensions of such iconography reveal a mind at play.
THE LIGHT IS GREEN
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THE LIGHT IS ORANGE
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THE LIGHT IS RED
(36x24" - SCALABLE)
HERE AND NOW, BLUE FOR YOU
(36x24" - SCALABLE)
Vino colors the mind with illusions. A nearly-anesthetized semi-consciousness becomes a playground of sorts in which visions take shape.
An image revisited and so colored gains new life, becoming the next act at play in the playground.
LA DEMOISELLE DE SAUVIGNON
(36x24" - SCALABLE)
The following images of iterative explorations based on the same original conception comprise set Number 2 of "Dance Lines," and are part of the Abstractions series.
DANCING LINES ARABESQUE NOIR
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DANCING LINES WITH A TWIST OF LIME
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DANCING LINES ORANGE AU POINT
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Although art has the ability to make the invisible visible, if only imaginatively, creativity itself remains an elusive subject of depiction.
The American composer Aaron Copland once commented that "Inspiration may be a form of superconsciousness, or perhaps subconsciousness. I wouldn't know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness."
I'm not aware of how the genesis of inspiration has ever been graphically represented, but here's my stab at it -- almost like punching in the dark by someone who has flailed there before, but this time has struck home.
It is, of course, part of the Abstractions series.
EMBRYONIC CONCEPTION OF AN IDEA
(30x24" - SCALABLE)
While an idea for a work may begin with a free-hand, pen-and-ink outline drawing of a dancing figure, further exploration can extract and refine a vision that was intuited but could only have been discovered through process.
Does not a sculptor discover an intuited form through process? Similarly, a musical composition can begin with a general sense of sound or mood whose final tangible expression must be synthesized "through process."
"Dancing Lines" are sets of iterative explorations based on the same original conception, and they are part of the Abstractions series. This is set Number 1.
DANCING LINES THROUGH CRIMSON
(32x24" - SCALABLE)
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DANCING LINES OF BLUE IN GREEN
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DANCING LINES IN KIND OF BLUE
(32x24" - SCALABLE)
"Ship of Fools" conjures the image of a community of very flawed (which is to say, "human, all too human") beings trapped in and by their idiosyncrasies on a joint voyage to somewhere at a given historical (or hysterical?) moment.
The mask of the Greek muse Melpomene is the traditional characterization for such a "tragic" scenario.
But we "normally" oscillate between the poles of the tragic and the comic in the course of our life -- after all, we are immersed in a sea that is replete with such contrasts. And so, we can choose to amuse, instead, as a balancing/neutralizing antidote to the morose spell of the tragic muse.
Comedy's acknowledgment of frivolity, silly foolishness, and folly in the human condition provides a restorative perspective, and that is just what my "Circus Antics" represents for me, as part of the Abstractions series.
CIRCUS ANTICS
(30x24" - SCALABLE)
No one sang "America The Beautiful" more soulfully than Ray Charles since the 1970s. But in the preceding decades and those that have followed, it would have been impossible for anyone to sing those lyrics with one's eyes wide open, for "the land of the free and home of the brave" has clearly been neither in fact, if ever.
And today, racial suffocation remains an iconic experience in our land, though very many, regardless of race, have "had it" with such degradation and dehumanization, and are working to denounce and eradicate it once and for all.
Given what we have experienced in our own time with knees on necks, we need to remember that our experience today is still only an echo of our American past. As the following image shows, a black woman with a white purse and white cotton gloves is pinned demeaningly to the pavement by a badged bigot's knee. See the actual brief video clip of the brutality of this assault at https://youtu.be/Dl_dsK_hqUM?t=1456
.
This image is part of the Politics And Struggle series.
THIS COULD HAVE BEEN ERIC GARNER'S OR GEORGE FLOYD'S MOTHER IN ALABAMA
(27x30" - SCALABLE)
For both an artist and a viewer, the language of abstraction is economical and can distill the essences of meaning that our intelligence is called upon to decode. For activists on the front lines, social commentary has often and effectively focused very much on words or explicit graphics.
Yet an artist's language and images, when experienced in a gallery or museum, may also comment, perhaps to a comparable effect, through a synthesis of symbolic forms.
As with activist messaging, my abstract "commentary" below, entitled "Lucro Oligárquico Y La Opresión De Las Masas," aims at a raising of consciousness but through encoded imagery that while less literal (other than its title) is no less pointedly critical of the class structure of oppression, whether in this country or elsewhere.
This visualization is my latest addition to the Politics And Struggle series, but could just as easily be part of my Abstractions series.
LUCRO OLIGÁRQUICO Y LA OPRESIÓN DE LAS MASAS?
(32x24" - SCALABLE)
By our questions, we challenge, goad, and tempt others to respond and act. Thus begins a dynamic push or pull interaction that can result in new experience, and even growth.
Our personal inertia, while a zone of comfort, can become a resigned confinement -- in short, a trap. The landscape changes when we take a step we've never taken.
The following visualization is part of the Abstractions series.
ARE YOU HIP?
(30x24" - SCALABLE)
There are artists who are experts at seduction. Pablo Picasso is, for me, among them. Who can resist stopping before one of his works?
As alluring or bizarre as the imagery may be, one can feel the magnetism that emanated from those eyes and that head.
Though I cannot say that his work has stylistically influenced my own, he unquestionably has illuminated the path for many who have come after him, and for that, he is "dear" to us.
This tribute to Pablo is included in the Art Heads series.
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MI QUERIDO PABLO
(32x24" - SCALABLE)
Oftentimes, the magic of abstraction is the conversion of the ordinary into the extraordinary. Touchstones of everydayness can be epitomized as transcendent.
Jarringly or delightfully, we can move instantly from a densely opaque reality to the ethereal lightness of meta.
This visualization is part of the Abstractions series.
THE CAT AND THE FISHBOWL
(34x24" - SCALABLE)
To the naked eye, the contemplation of objects in space is a grand illusion. The observation of depth becomes an imaginative play of perceived relative dimensions that may or may not accord with reality.
Yet the play goes on since all that most of us have to see with, most of the time, is the naked eye. The following visualization teases us into seeing depth as a relationship of contrived relative dimensions, and is included in the Abstractions series.
SO NEAR, SO FAR
(36x24" - SCALABLE)
Minimalism in form and color confronts us with the sufficiency of basic principles. Indeed, the core thesis of "less is more" challenges the viewer to see substance in the most minimal content and still be engaged, and perhaps even captivated.
The title "Complementarity In Black And White" describes exactly what the following conception embodies, which is intended to jog elemental reflection, and is an addition to the Abstractions series.
COMPLEMENTARITY IN BLACK AND WHITE
(30x45" - SCALABLE)
What wonder may have occurred to the first cave dweller who noticed the interplay of lights and darks and the stunning play of colors in viewing the exterior from the interior! Of course, we are always allowed the license of imagination, and that's precisely what the following abstraction conveys.
While dispensing entirely with conventional perspectival dimensionality, we experience depth here with an almost psychedelic reversal of values where lights occupy both foreground and background, and darks paradoxically occupy the foreground.
Enjoy the interplay in this recent addition to the Abstractions series.
VIEW FROM THE CAVE
(24x36" - SCALABLE)
What we imagine, when brought to light, cannot help but become more, less, or different. The following "abstraction," for me, captures the "more" differently.
It is part of the Abstractions series.
A PRIMITIVE ENCOUNTER
(30x40" - SCALABLE)
TITANS OF 20TH CENTURY MUSIC SERIES
It should go without saying that the last century would not have been the same or as significant without the great composers and musicians of the concert hall. So, I need not say more about this, except to note that everyone has favorites, and mine are the icons of this series of portraits, shown in the order of their creation.
__________
IGOR STRAVINSKY
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CLAUDE DEBUSSY
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MAURICE RAVEL
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GUSTAVE MAHLER -- THE BEDEVILED ANGEL
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DIMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH -- CONSTRAINED GENIUS
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ARNOLD SCHOENBERG -- THE ICONOCLAST
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SERGEI PROKOFIEV
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ALBAN BERG
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GEORGE GERSHWIN
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AARON COPLAND
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BENJAMIN BRITTEN
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PAUL HINDEMITH
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SERGEI RACHMANINOFF
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ELLIOTT CARTER
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RALPH VAUGHN WILLIAMS
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BÉLA BARTÓK
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The following two salutes to 20th-Century giants of conscience are my latest additions to the American Conscience series
PAUL ROBESON -- WHEN ONE STANDS FOR THE MANY
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N.F.S.
HELEN KELLER -- THE EYES THAT SAW FEELINGLY
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N.F.S.
Perspectival illusions (or what art critic, historian, and theorist Clement Greenberg elegantly referred to as "the fictive planes of depth") are often the iconography of art today, as in the past. They provide us with mind trips, so to speak, and we either willingly or unwillingly travel those paths of suggestion and virtual depth.
Beginning with "Achromatic Dimensions," I am exploring the theme of perspective as an optional or essential, yet perennially-missing, third dimension of a two-dimensional surface, within the GeoMetrics series.
ACHROMATIC DIMENSIONS
(32x32" - SCALABLE)
No doubt, colors and shapes can have "dimensions" and meanings of their own beyond mere spatial formalism, as is underscored by the suggestive titles of the chromatically-nuanced renderings below. You see, perspective has more to do than with mere lines on a plane; it also has to do with how things appear from one's imagination and understanding.
A SPACE ODDITY 2021
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CHROMATIC INVERSION BY MOONLIGHT
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MAUVE INVENTION
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DONE IN DUNE
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PALESTINE TODAY
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The diagonal in a square or rectangular or even circular frame has a dynamic force and presence that any artist must take into account when designing a composition. But there's a colloquial expression that is sometimes used to describe a diagonal relationship of one thing to another (even to a tondo) that I find humorously captures the visually playful spirit of the numbered compositions below. So, this set is called "Catty Corner" and is part of the GeoMetrics series.
CATTY CORNER NO. 1
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CATTY CORNER NO. 2
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CATTY CORNER NO. 3
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CATTY CORNER NO. 4
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CATTY CORNER NO. 5
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CATTY CORNER NO. 6
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CATTY CORNER NO. 7
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PLAID PLAY
(30x30" - SCALABLE)
In 1969, when the first astronauts to land on the moon showed us a view of the earth, or what physicist Carl Sagan referred to as the "pale blue dot," we caught a glimpse of our planetary ecosystem as a vulnerable whole, a truly global living environment.
Another way of "re-imaging" that view is as a complex "spinning rainbow" that should always make us think of how not to harm or disturb that celestial work of art.
The visualization below is part of the Planet Apocalypse series.
SPINNING RAINBOW
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In ancient Greece, Protagoras of Abdera claimed, in effect, that "man is the measure of all things." But "man" has long ago been surpassed as the measure of anything besides his own species.
Instead, the phenomena that populate our universal existence have redefined what can be imagined and pondered, let alone measured. It is as if the dimensional extremes of celestial objects have today taken on the role of yardsticks that are continuously stretching beyond our terrestrial preconceptions.
And perhaps nothing exemplifies such redefinition more than the yawning voids of the so-called "black holes" in space. Note that as one continues to stare into the "infinite darkness" of that fanciful cosmic sinkhole below (in its suggested dimensions), one may get the sense that it is continuously churning and alive.
This is part of the Abstractions series.
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BLACK HOLE
(24x40" - SCALABLE)
The image-makers of the world well know that it can all begin with intent and/or fortuity. Then there is choice in selection, and problem-solving, and, of course, afterthoughts, or what we call revisions -- all in a progressive evolutionary discovery of an ultimate, though oftentimes only approximate, expression. And then, now and then, one confronts the impossibility of settling on just one final image.
In this regard, there's an analogous resemblance to human gestation, in which an expected "one" turns into an unexpected "two" or more. And so, here, we've ended up with an unintended "ménage à trois" in three incarnations, each with its own charm, as part of the Abstractions series.
MÉNAGE À TROIS
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MÉNAGE À TROIS AU SOIR
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MÉNAGE À TROIS EN ROSE
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Can a work of art have "babies"? The answer is the same as if the question were "Can one idea lead to another?" And since the image below is quite literally the "related" offspring of the preceding "Ménage" set of images, it appears here as progeny, and included within the Abstractions series.
PROGENY
(36x30" - SCALABLE)
Originally, the phrase "less is more" was from a poem by Robert Browning, but it was adopted nearly a century later by Bauhaus architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe as a tenet of Minimalist design and architecture, and it aptly sums up the aesthetic of the spare, whether in form, color, or use of space.
The question of "what is enough?" is always a question of balance between too much and too little and is the crux of artistic choice and taste.
The following four minimalist abstractions are succinct examples of how I chose to answer that question, and they form part of the Abstractions series.
CAN YOU SPARE A RAINBOW?
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And, as we can see, "less is more" is still the case even if more than less.
STILL MINIMAL
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Despite being the Spanish court's artist, and well-known as a great portratist during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Francisco de Goya y Lucientes was also known for his depictions of grotesque characters and for recording the horrible. One of his famous and most heartrending canvases is "The Third of May," depicting the ruthless execution of the defenders of Madrid against the Napoleonic French invasion.
The contrasting opposition of lantern light and darkness, the bloodied heap of the slain, the unarmed pleading against a firing squad intent on cold-blooded murder, while those who would be next cower in dread, are a ghastly depiction of the brutality of armed conquest.
Although there may be no minimalist way of capturing the gruesome reality that Goya has, my chromatically muted and formally understated abstraction below is more an epitaph than a portrayal, hence my mention of Goya and my reference to the sinister Spanish phrase "Al Paredón" (against the wall) in its title -- which could easily have been the literal title for Goya's masterwork.
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GOYA: AL PAREDÓN
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In the mind of an artist, abstract imagery can be uninhibitedly promiscuous when it comes to concepts, freely "matching up" with whatever makes or doesn't make sense. But being tangible and fixed, such pairings are more than mere liaisons of the moment or "one-night stands."
SUPER HIGHWAY AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT
(30x45" - SCALABLE)
As mentioned elsewhere on this site, my artistic process often begins with image A in my search for image B. We can think of it as a search for “a picture within a picture,” and “the find” can be as stunning as it is satisfying, either on first notice or after further processing, as was the case with the next two images below, which are part of the Abstractions series.
Also, as I’ve stated elsewhere, new meaning and conception can be found in a different and unrelated initial meaning as one plumbs the layers and levels of perception and significance.
TIDAL ROLLS
(32x60" - SCALABLE)
EMERALD INFUSION
(22x36" - SCALABLE)
Anyone familiar with Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" is aware that the static can inspire the dynamic. For sure, colors on canvas can trigger colors in music. But the reverse can also occur, as with the following abstraction, entitled "Fêtes," which "echoes" the colorful figurativeness and spaciousness of Debussy's eponymous second of three orchestral Nocturnes.
FÊTES
(24x45" - SCALABLE)
The colors and sounds of night create a music of allure. It is almost like stepping into another dimension of sense and experience. And the colorful ribbons of daytime become luminescent playful bands of light.
The image below captures that magic after the sun sets.
