Youghigheny towards Ohiopyle
Artist's Statement
Speak Memory, is the title of an evocative memoir written by Vladimir Nabokov. It is a sensualist's recollection of his early childhood through the distilled, self aware perspective of the adult novelist.
It is through the lens of memory and feeling that these landscapes emerge. Although I might draw or photograph a place that is interesting to me as reference, these paintings; their light, color and tactile surface are more about feeling, memory, dream, remembrance and forgetting.
Are these specific places? Yes. They existed, evolved in my mind as I painted them in the studio, and they exist as real places as works of art. Are they truthful? Again the answer is yes. They are as truthful as any experience distilled by circumstance, time, weather and selective memory. They are my fact and fiction.
In the last two years I have been looking at 17th century Dutch landscape painters such as Jacob van Ruisdael. I have been wondering at the relationship between sky and land, unbridled nature and man's impulse to control nature, while questioning what appears to be ethereal and atmospheric and what appears to be solid and immutable.
Professional Life
Education
- Bard College M.F.A.
- Yale University,B.A.
- Temple University, Rome, Italy
- Art Fellow Residency, Skidmore College
- Yale Summer School of Music and Art
- High Point Cafe, one person show, April 2009
- JMS Gallery, group show, 2007
- JMS Gallery, two person show, 2005
- Rosenfeld Gallery, Small Works Show, 2005
- Arcadia University, Glenside, Pa. Group Show, Works on Paper
- Germantown Friends School, Philadelphia, PA
Yay Michael!
ReplyDeleteGlad to see some new images up here.
Looks like you are inspired by the Yock!!