The 20th Century Room
Toro
2003, Acrylic on Canvas, 26.5" x 52"In this new era of war and threats of weapons of mass distraction I was recently motivated to another story painting. It reminded me of the two previous pieces, Doom and Doom II. Since then I have mostly tried to avoid high drama and complex story in favor of a more gentle allegory, but here again you have a strong fusion of somewhat arbitrary compositional techniques to depict a horrific event. In most of the paintings I've been doing recently I've been trying not to overthink my game. I'm just out there to have a good time, get on base, hopefully score a few runs. I do like the treatment of space I achieved here, with its sprinkling of visual capsules.
Something I've been working with for a long time is the tension between inspiration and realization, between the finished and the incomplete. I think this dialectic probably began from an inability to deliver, but it's evolved a lot since then, along with my understanding that this isn't a matter of either-or. Some images we value because they are fresh, gestural, and suggestive. Some because they convey a deeper level of engagement. But it isn't a continuum and both these aspects exist in nearly every artwork.
