I seek to discover or create that pivotal moment in human events when there is no turning back; disaster or salvation is imminent. The scene is a finely balanced fulcrum about to tip; the viewer can speculate on the outcome.

Romantic influences combined with a realization that in the greatest Shakespearean works all the main characters end up dead,to me,are the ingredients of a great painting.

The infamous author of the supernatural, H.P. Lovecraft, tells of an artist whose paintings are the embodiment of the hideous and grotesque. Strange rites and rituals performed by hyperborean humanoids and antediluvian amphibian-like gods fill scores of canvases. Lovecraft asked his friend how he arrived at these sepulchral images, why he was being plagued by nightmares. The artist replied, at first, that he was illuminating the research of an acquaintance- a professor who was investigating primordial cults. Later he confessed that, through the weird accidental geometrical construction of the timbers of the attic he lived in, he was able to shift into fractured non-Euclidean dimensions of reality that exist unseen all around us. The paintings were actual visual records of personally witnessed dementia and horror.

I am that artist and have found that doorway to those unnamable places. Yet the metaphysical gate once opened cannot be closed. They can cross to our side, too.

My visual imagination is further fed by Gothic Horror novels. The five key elements to any Gothic Horror Novel are Murder, Incest, a Ghost, and an Evil Monk (priest, nun, or clergyman), and a Castle. The best of these are The Monk by Matthew Lewis, Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, Dumas' A Thousand and One Ghosts, and of course Shelley's Frankenstein and Stoker's Dracula. I am an insatiable reader of these fantastic supernatural books.

The Muse of the Romantic ideas found in the Symbolist and Orientalist tendencies of 19th century Art, especially the Pre-Raphaelites and Rosicrucians, nurtures my natural fondness of ruins, myths, fate, and tragedy. Artists that I most admire- Gustave Moreau, Arnold Bocklin, and Nicolas Poussin, are my companions as we dwell in these sacred shadowy groves.

Today, Italian Horror movies of the 60’s and 70’s by Mario Bava inspire, as does the revolutionary music of that period, especially The MC5 and Blue Cheer. The MC5 were a musical explosion and societal assault. Their motto was ”Dope, Guns, and F**king in the Streets.” I combine that emotion with ideas about painting and pyrotechnics from Joe Coleman, who proves that you can be both a performance artist and a serious painter. Often, I have performed pieces where I chop off my (wax) hand with an axe, (appear to) pass a sword through someone’s head, or spontaneously explode (using hidden copper sheeting as protection).

In the studio my ambition is to easel paint like an Old Master, using oils in the classical sense. I begin with canvas hand stretched with copper tacks, apply rabbit skin glue sizing, then brush on three coats of oil priming which are sanded smooth between each layer, and finally finish with two coats of black oil ground. Opaque images begin the concretion of the conceptual dream and dozens of layers of oil glazing complete the material illusion that lives within a glowing, shimmering surface. By utilizing pure pigments alone to create images, maximum conceptual and formal room is left for the artist to seduce his prey, the audience. The appearance of the familiar, traditional surface is the most successful device for letting people draw close, inspect the artwork for aesthetic pleasure, and finally be horrified, disgusted, raptured, or enthralled at the macabre manifestation presented.

Epiphany is the goal, reflection on the eternal. Metaphysical psychic transformation through sublime visual terror and surprise.