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
Oil and resin on sculpted foam
50x 37 x 8 inches
2023
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.
oil over sculpted media
60 ht x 48 wd x 6 dpth inches
2022
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.
oil and mixed on canvas over board
frame copper wrapped over wood
60 ht x 72 wd x 7 dpth inches
2022
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.
oil on canvas over board
resin water, sculpted foam, oak frame
80x46 inches
2020
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.
2018
78x56X6 inches
Oil on canvas, over sculpted foam on panel, three dimensional, sculpted female, copper hair
Signed by artist lower left front, signed dated back
“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.