About
I was in born in Berkeley and raised in Albany, CA. My family spans multiple generations in California from Portuguese dirt farmers to Berkeley Communists of Danish decent to Eastern European Jews of rabbinical lineage. (hence we go way back in the modern sense). While studying poetry at UC Berkeley I took a road trip to see Jackson Pollock’s paintings at LACMA. To be transfixed by a painting felt like I had been thrust into a different world. From this experience I had to be consumed by painting and NYC was the best place to fill this desire. While in the Bay Area a fellow painter recommended going to the Arts Students League of New York. At “The League” on 57th street in NYC there were two instructors that stood out: Larry Poons an abstract painter and Barbara Adrain a magical realist painter. One instilled in me that I should paint and the other how to paint.
Once painting took hold of me I was unable to shake it. I then left NYC to paint in Mexico City. The time aboard was invaluable as it further proved to myself that the geographical region of the West is part of who I am as a painter. There is kind of speed (or lack of) in which Bay Area artists create. We malinger to a degree, whether to go for a stroll, enjoy a stimulate or marvel at natural landscape is part of the practice. My time developing an independent studio practice in Mexico led to pursuing a more formal way to develop via graduate school. While the solitude of the studio was great the communal aspect of graduate school and the opportunity to do independent research was invaluable. I moved to New Orleans to start my MFA, However, I ended up finishing my degree in Greensboro, North Carolina at UNCG.
After 10 years away from the Bay Area I returned to Berkeley. I now paint in my Berkeley home studio, as well as spending time with my partner Vanessa Espinoza, a ceramist, and our daughter Noémi. Please reach out if one has comments, questions or inquires about purchasing the work.
Some thoughts on the work:
My abstract painting is more akin to red dot painted on a cave wall 44 thousand years ago, in that painting (applying colored dirt to a support) is a more primal and intuitive expression. However, the formal genre of abstract painting has a time and space relationship like the stars- it is the real, something very concrete, yet on the move and difficult to locate. Part of the concreteness of paint is the materiality of the paint. To reflect on the materiality is to question the physical properties of the paint as well and contemplate the social and cultural phenomena of paint. For myself this is where painting as a process is captivating.
In the studio I fashion many of my own tools to scrape and pull paint, layers are added and removed, time compounds and then there is a pause. It is here that the viewer comes into play. They make the work happen with their own eyes and thoughts.