THE FOLLOWING PANELS ARE TINTED MEDITERRANEAN LIME PLASTER: the white gold that starts as limestone and ends as limestone, with an important journey in between. I am as drawn to the subtlety, quality, and history of this material as to the subject I'm depicting. The lime plaster is applied with various tools, then compressed with a trowel, burnished with a stone, and finished with wax.  It’s a meticulous process.  The richness of this medium, its sheen and velvety texture are not easily conveyed in photographs.

I AM SELF-TAUGHT IN PAINTING. Periodically I have studied masterworks to hone my skills and move toward a new body of work. Seven of the works below are études after James McNeill Whistler paintings. They are a means through which I sought to distill essential elements by tracking what I saw as formal qualities of his intent. In his quest for the ephemeral, he captures just enough essence to transfer its vibration to the viewer.  His late mastery is one of subtraction, of knowing what not to put in, and a far more difficult one to achieve than learning form, color, and line.  I am drawn to that lack. It creates a space around itself that allows my presence there, close to it.  It is the “space between two notes” as Rilke would say. 

The peacock tributes and folding screen evolved from the études.

WHY IS A DEAD 19TH CENTURY PAINTER RELEVANT TODAY? In our age of sensationalism, of over-expression and short attention spans, I want to espouse and uplift the eye that can express depth without the bells and whistles -- the long, slow, patient gaze.

AS FOR HERAKLES, the final panel shown here, he is as modern as humanity’s universal longing for the right path no matter the personal cost -- as the split personality of wisdom and rashness, violence and repentance, and the striving for correction that are so relevant today. He is just a man, one of us, who chose the direction of his life and overcame its hardships. He then bore his death and mastered his own end.

This is the first of several panels broaching this subject.