love in the Ruins

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Oil on canvas over sculpted foam

58 x 42 x 4 inches

October 2024

Just a Dance II

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Oil on canvas over sculpted foam

50 x 48 x 3 inches

October 2024

Faire L'Amour III

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Oil on canvas over sculpted foam

50 x 40 x 5 inches

2023

BREED

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Oil over sculpted material

55 x 70 x 4 inches

2024

Love’s alchemy kiln

Spectral vapors blaze

Her poised indifference an innocent plea

His sightless delirium increasing percent. 

Resigned to believe, in memories film

Her shapeshift allure roils a spectral sea

His leaden command rises favor

A morphic breed suspended in torment.

Plum deep cadmium flowing bright

Ecstasy delayed and bliss denied

Emission occurs his eyes roll back

Her spawn emits aureolae light.

R.M.

7.22.2024

Dark Passenger

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Oil on canvas over sculpted foam

64 x 43 x 4 inches

2023

Persone di Colore

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Oil over sculpted material

48 x 58 x 3 inches

2024

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Three Bells

Just outside the back of his callused mind

compressed onto a shiny metal orb,

a conjured notion avoids, untethered.

Touch and felt impression hesitantly ignored.

Retinal cognition will assure its design

yet a plurality of faculty fails to absorb,

it’s weight, “not seen”, radius “lacks measure”.

The tally of gods denounces, yet a single eye implored.

With adjacent hemisphere’s approval maligned

and memory in denial, objectivity was poised to abhor,

a visceral slab of bone, powerfully descends in leather.

Its Celsius pulse, not in accord…

Under and behind fallen tears, streams combine

They splash and puddle, as losses scored,

He being diminished, himself the transgressor.

With thought and perception divergent, his future unmoored.

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Faire L'Amour II

Pain and desire invert posture momentarily, it began.

Under the weighty demand of hope, they

paused.

Loves laser light illumination,

ended.

Their negative double exposure reappeared before their existence in, the

past.

STAR

The colliding background pieces of turquoise and cobalt violet on yellow were executed as separate designs, with less concern to supporting the overall composition. This approach is much different in a background than I might normally undertake.

My hope is to capture the viewers interest with the background first, possibly a default approach to pictorial success. I want the color here to be like food, the thick texture (feel) of the oil paint mixed with sand is equally important as the taste (hue),when held on the tongue.

Her foreshortened torso bent forward toward the viewer, while turning on axis upon one leg, allows the position of the other three limbs to pose with her stylized hair shape to form a five-pointed STAR.

I chose to wrap each point of the star in a ribbon of ultramarine oil,emphasizing the radial aspect of each arm, leg and hair. Later coating the surface with tiny crystals,(which may not be perceptible in this photograph).The crystal coating lightened the ultramarine hue effectively.

The five-pointed star, first appear in Egyptian iconography, later in Mesopotamian cuneiform , ultimately adopted to symbolize the western culture.

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NEST

Love in the Ruins, a motif for the ages.

The Bald Eagle nestled inside the man; it embodies his relentless instinct to dominate ,forcing his prey to submit.

 Seen here, aggressively seeking an exit. His lover it appears, will have none of it, exhilarated by its prowess.  Her hand preventing the predator’s escape.

 Or is her hand evicting the bird, thus taming her chosen mate.

Americans assign an array of attributes to this bird. Having observed them in their natural habitat they live up to these and more.

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CULT OF ISIS

The Pharaoh Akhenaten is released from the soft protective wings of ISIS - a high queen of Egypt according to ancient Egyptian mythology. She presides as protector and consort of the dead.

The moment has arrived, she casts him gently in the direction of the opening in the tomb wall, he drifts toward the time-space continuum …. Anibus awaits.

Anibus, the dog-headed god presided over the mummification process, and now serves as guardian of the portal to the afterlife. The mortal king of Egypt is represented by the sculpted bust, but his immortal soul is not visible. Anibus will entrust the pharaoh unto Sekret in his journey through time.

In the foreground a mortal woman is poised, she offers herself to the assembled Cult of Isis. Anibus focuses the cosmic ray upon her, and she is transformed into Sekret.

The silver inlaid alchemist symbols, upon her limbs, entitle her unique human qualifications; allegiance, stealth, magik and healing.

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UNDER HEAVEN

Ethereal mirror, azure surrounds

Longitudinal waves stream Verde and Lime

Love's, former purpose abandoned for now.

Rather, Jete' glissade intersects verve and time.

Imperial poise breaks the barrier of sound.

Heptagonal theorem, curves and angles align.

Thereof he who yearned, sadness endowed.

Gathered void in upturned palm, heaven's sign.

Material Lavender meanders her gown

Tangential vole', planter flexion defined.

Dove in flight, Avant beauty unbowed

Patter-Pitter brise', frappe refined.

Zeal la Turquoise transparent renown

Proverbial treasure of earth be mine.

Above and around brushed copper enshrouds.

Lathered flesh aloft, a body sublime.

STREAM OF DREAMS

Eddies unspool fine scarlet strings,

Cantilevered spine, immersion begins.

Alizarin crimson untwines, Dolly Vardan collides.

In playful sport, they seek and hide.

Arching vertebrae of myth and bone,

protect Cutthroat and German Brown alone.

Fauve fingertips stake metacarpal cape.

anointed sediment touched, cause crustacean unsafe.

~

Knitted steeple bows above, shadow stream’s floor,

swift music hums, ‘yearning amore’.

Violet muse, the wandering kind

dwelling in mist, ether, and mind.

Perpetual dream in an endless night

awake nor dead, matters naught.

Craving Hooved beast, her fantasy sought,

A lone Satyr tenderly caught.

Bosom’s warm cauldron now to restore,

Brook trout ascend and Rainbows soar.

~

Feminine muse, ERATO wanders free,

child of powerful Zeus, and Mnemosyne.

Cloned of dorsal fishes, with shape-shifting allure,

irresistible force, stalking centaur procured.

Appeased alas, she enters the creek,

Siren’s magnetism, Aphrodite’s beauty competes,

prefers teasing trout, shiny and sleek.

~

ERATO traversed centuries of depiction,

Appears here alas in oil paints lustrous fine fiction,

Artist fingers pinch brush, a conception in paint, depicting sleeps intricate vision.

Where Species swim glazed with careful precision.

Muse in supple forms tying Grayling tatted fin,

sojourning continues her legend of sin.

The painter unseen at vanishing point, behind dream’s pale light,

Dwelling place of one artist acolyte.

Faire L'Amour

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Magdalena

Her pose is self-reflective, Magdalena is internalized and self-possessed. Her back turned to the artist and the viewer; she cares not. She is contemplative and self-aware, John Paul’s Mona Lisa.

A mighty expanse of alizarin crimson blood flows within; carrying teardrop forms, the lime colored forms, highlighted with zinc yellow.

These forms, her protean DNA, emerge from a winding internal canyon of deep burgundy, which defines the perimeter of her body in the picture. The forms are buoyant, gathering upward, seeking to manifest the woman in the world; another victory in sport or profession, or another loving act as wife and friend. This is my child.

A spring palette surrounds her. The twenty-five carved pieces of canvas are interposed to undulate and counterpoint one another, ever redirecting the viewers’ attention back to the subject, forming a colliding garden of moving components around her. In the background, textural spring floral oil paint mixed with sand flutters and stumbles across an azure hue of pale blue sky behind.

A competitive swimmer and triathlete, I have watched Magdalena remove her swim cap on the pool deck a hundred times after a race. Her long dark burnt umber hair would fall onto and through a waiting hand as she briefly groomed it and strained the water out . The long-mirrored shock of hair arises from the nape of her neck, arches over her head and passes down the length of a strong athletic torso and leg.

Effortlessly kneeling and passively stretching a limb, the cascade of polished bronze reaches her lower femur, It curves inward toward the other leg. I intend this long bronze metal shape to be perceived as a path of energy, originating in her spiritual center and returning to her lower body, thereby sustaining a continuum of graceful repose.

Lady in Waiting

“Lady in Waiting” is the muse of course. By that I mean, the presentation relies on the general map of a woman’s physical anatomy, totally impersonal, something which we know in a generic sense, she is no one in particular. No culture, race or political agenda or philosophy…only gender. The geometric forms, substitute her body parts and copper hair with abstract shapes, not realistically fashioned, lacking details of identity; not a specific person. Yet the structural architecture of feminine form prevails. It is an armature to compose a color and textural composition, to which I gave my full energy for three months in 2018.

The muse in the artistic context provides the possibility of much more in meaning, much less in identity. The power of symbolism replaces the power of ideological reason. Often one hears spoken; “what women want” or “what women think”. These statements always impress me as presumptuous. In symbolic presentation, the physical muse has a chance to get closer to woman.

Her existential being is presented as structure and Art. She is not illustrated, photogenic or nuanced. This image is not indebted to reality.

Further emphasizing her as symbol, the physically deepest and darkest part of this picture, closest to the unconscious, is her face...and it is absent. The absent face emphasizes the depth of the unconscious.. as most significant.Thus rendering the usual facial glamour of as irrelevant.

Her gesture is of course one of fixing her reddish mane (cut copper pate). I prefer a simple unpretentious act of self-maintenance, as it refers to herself, not a watching world.

The composition is two stacked rectangles. The lower has the back leg cutting diagonally through, upward (with elbow on knee) the upper rectangle, has the head and neck moving diagonally through upward in parallel,to aforementioned leg in bottom rectangle.

Finally the tittle: The initial oil sketch on canvas, the zinc yellow ground, tumbled through my life (studio) for ten years. I glanced or studied the canvas on a constant basis over that period. Finally, I formulated a strategy as to how I might proceed this year.

Alchema

I wanted to create a muse, a woman who existed before time. She is a priestess,  her attributes are both spiritual and ritualistic, yet she exhibits desire, she feels alone. She accesses the ethereal universe, inhabited by spirits and souls, yet she is a physical being whose purpose is to survive on formative earth.

We find her at home, in the location of her choosing; a tidal pool, protected by a rocky structure behind, separating her from the primordial brine from which she arose. She walks on all four limbs, ready for any threat.

Her habits, lifestyle and capabilities are expressed in symbols of her own conception. They are inscribed, and then inlaid in the craggy rock of the background, non-precious metals inlaid…maid precious. Their purpose and meaning,a proclamation of self to both the natural and spirit world. They are a statement or warning to any who trespass her territory. Or…we who simply observe. The symbols she has crafted are simultaneously abstract and real. They are her truths; home, protector, spirit medium, warrior, sensualist and survivor. Foremost she possesses the transformative Magik: she is the first alchemist.

She feels deeply. She is a medium and feels everything that mankind will ultimately feel, but does not understand to what end. She feels exhilaration at her apparent invincibility, but loneliness as she waits for an answer to the question, which haunts her; why am I here? She seeks to share her quest with a mate.

Like a predator in the wild, she drops her forehead laterally, in order to stack eyes vertically to better track a vertical prey; man. She has disposed of an intruder, an imposter, whose remains are dissembled at the bottom of the pool. Her silver hair catches sunlight from the sky, transforming it into fire. She has strung a necklace from his metacarpal bones.

She is the progenitor of all our feelings and aspirations. She is the super-man that Nietchze described, a human who existed before the invented gods.

Like the Greek warriors who follow centuries later, Alchema is intimately connected to her prey. The fallen prey, sustains her life and fulfills a hunters imperative. She devours his flesh and drinks the psych’nous from his skull ,extracting it through alchemized daggered hair.

She notices you. Her head is cocked at an extreme angle, suddenly alerted to your presence. You are prey who entered a predator’s vision.