Dragonfly

 

When I was about 6 years old I wandered around in the back of my Grandmother’s barn in rural Ohio. Once I thought I saw a fairy fly by me. Of course it must have been a big dragonfly or butterfly – but I ran into the house trying to describe the vision to my elder.

“Wait” she said. “Don’t tell me about it. Draw it for me.”

That was were it started, and continues to this day.

I began working with color fields at Cooper Union. Mark Rothko was my inspiration. I painted bands and bands of color and then began to see a horizon line across the canvas. I’ll be darned if it wasn’t sky and earth. I began to paint the landscape. In my landscape interpretations, I replace concrete detail and substitute strokes and bands of color to achieve a certain poetic composition.

"The true artist must perforce go from time to time to the elemental big forms - Sky, Sea, Mountain, Plain - to sort of re-true himself up, to recharge the battery. For these big forms have everything."--John Marin