During the summer of 1998 my work took a path which I had not anticipated. A visit to my Irish studio by a ten year-old neighbor initiated a significant shift in my perception of art making. On that particular day he attempted to copy my drawing of a bull (see "Andrew's Bull"). Seeing my realistically rendered bull transformed into a wonderfully animated linear form compelled me to question the boundaries I had established long ago as a “Realist” painter. That event was coupled with a restless desire to broaden my palette of green and gray and to merge the numerous images and memories I had amassed from nine years of travel to the Neolithic and Celtic ruins of Ireland, the British Isles and Brittany.
Illuminated manuscripts such as the Book of Kells and the Book of Durrow, medieval carved Sheela-na -gig stones from Ireland and 1st century A.D. land drawings on the hillsides of England all served as inspiration for these paintings which question the link between the past and the present, the mundane, the mythic and the spiritual.
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Secular Seclusion
Oil/linen
60in x 40in
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Metro-Gnome
Oil/linen
60in x 36in
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Sheba's Dance
Oil/linen
60in x 40in
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Cerne Abbas
oil on linen
50in x 62in
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Shela-na-gig She
oil on linen
60in x 40in
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Andrew's Bull
oil on linen
40in x60in
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