Resume: "a summing up, a summary of experence...."

Education:

My teachers have been Cimabue and Giotto, Grunewald and the notebooks of Leonard da Vinci. The Gauguin of "The Yellow Christ", "Jacob Wrestling with the Angel" and "Who are we, where do we come from, where are we going?". Edvard Munch, Gustav Klimt, Emil Nolde, Soutine. Matisse of the war years, especially "The Piano Lesson". Guernica. Max Beckmann, de Kooning, Rico Le Brun, Marcarelli. Giacometti, Henry Moore, Noguchi, Scarpitta. And the unnamed cave painter, native Americans, Africans, Russian icon makers, medieval sculptors.  Emil Nolde "Unknown people are my friends...."

Work Experience:

I have worked hardest at trying to undo that childhood training that said "You are here to please others." I have worked hardest to overcome the feeling that I ought to be doing "something else", patterning myself on someone else. To understand, with Agnes Martin, that "All that seems like "fantastic mistakes are not fantastic mistakes...it all has to be done. That which seems like a false step is just the next step." And, "Independence is the most essential character trait in an artist."

I have struggled against those who would have me choose camps. I believe that the present distinction between realist art and abstract art is an unfruitful one, that there is only radiant art and art which is strangled by its own system. Paul Klee: "Laws should be made so that flowers can grow from them." Matisse" " It follows that an absolute can only be reached by intuition, whereas the rest of our knowledge arises out of analysis." Picasso: "Painting is freedom...if you jump you might fall on the wrong side of the rope. But if you're not willing to take the risk of breaking your neck, what good is it? You don't jump at all." Max Beckmann: "I hardly need to abstract things, for each object is unreal enough that I can only make it real by painting."

[excerpts from a resumé written in 1978 when applying to Nexus Gallery.]