Rodeo, 22" x 20", mixed media on panel, 1987. Artist's collection.

My love affair with paint as a substance and an aesthetic subject unto itself was destined to evolve onto abstract expressionism. If the intuitive paintings were difficult to explain, then the abstract expressionist works are off the charts. Even so, I intend to relate a sense of the profundity and exuberance involved in making these works at this juncture of my career. Honestly, in the mid-1980's abstract expressionism was thirty years removed from being front page news. And ironically, there was just as much puritanical self-flagellating going on in the abstract expressionist school of thought as there was (predictably) in the representational academic school of thought. Both schools invoked the "purity" factor involving creative process and product.

This painting is titled Rodeo because of the unconscious suggestion of a horse and rider in the brushwork. But more importantly it's titled Rodeo as a metaphorical reference to the activity of "saddling" the irrational and tempestuous unconscious mind for the purpose of "riding" it through the process of creating a meaningful image.