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It
was with the Goya "Disasters of War", my discovery
at the Prado in 1965, that I realized that figure drawing
could be a far more demanding venture than I had yet understood,
an inspiration to hold above me. Those remarkable etchings
were visual shocks created by a higher intelligence. I doubt
that any of Goya's narratives had been keenly detected by
this undergraduate trained to search for abstraction "unsullied
by the illustrative". It was only as a graduate student
frequenting reserve print collections that I was able to
wed Goya's compositions with his message.
In 1969 I began the unsuccessful
pursuit of multiple figures, always returning to the profundity
of the head, the solo portrait. Over succeeding years, the
struggle to assemble a congregation of bodies became more
important, more natural. The "Bathers", begun
in 1974, were worked abstractly en plein air with trees,
bushes and water bodies, sources surrounding me. These were
then brought into my studio and transformed into figure
groups. They were my first true inventions, "leaving
room" and departing from severe observation. I carried
these bathers into the '80s with the "Verona Hill Pond"
series of bathers from life and later the Lake Superior
swimmers, canvases and monotypes built from images harvested
while my son was contending for himself in water. For these
I had gathered my personal photos and adjoined gestures
of those youth entering the water with the stationary armatures
of elder figures. Everything began at the water's edge and
sought the future.
In 1984 the "No Exit"
series grew with juxtapositionings aided by Muybridge's
serial photos of figures in motion. Caught in their black
rectangles, the models appeared to be accepting imprisonment
in locked enclosures. The figures I added were unaware of
anyone else, all trapped within their confines. At least
three hundred images, beginning also with life drawings
that led to numerous monotypes, paintings and an etched
series provided several years of challenge and endless lessons.
The frugal repasts and conversations
of the mid 1990s were the last series of multiple figures
to date. These gesture drawings and monotypes, each composed
of four or five figures, arrived spontaneously and naturally,
having begun with portraits of friends and family. Now in
2014, in the midst of my intense occupation with landscape
sites, I continue to return to the single figure in a different
manner. In March, 2013, I began my first series of clay
sculptures. Though singular in their attitudes and separable
from their groups, I nonetheless designed their gestures
as interactive. I will continue these assemblages through
2015 and hope to alternate the 3D figure groupings also
to be used in monotype compositions which will alter in
meaning by way of the modifications. |
