The Dancing Bear, 10" x 8", acrylic on board, 1990. Artist's collection.

This small abstract expressionist painting represents a brief reprise of the investigations I made in this mode of painting a few years earlier. The execution of this little painting served as a touch stone for my intuitive/painterly sensibilities. This painting also served as a reminder of the severity of the rules of non-objective abstract expressionism. I say this because, to my eye, I had spotted what was clearly a dancing bear within the matrix of all the well intentioned, non-objective, serious-minded brushwork. At this particular juncture of my career I found the rules of non-objective abstract expressionism to be so tiresomely purist that I left the little bear in the composition to dance to it's heart's content.

Another motivation for the title had to do with the changes in the global political climate at the time. I was visualizing the previously, and entirely threatening Russian Bear as performing a more humanistic "dance" on the global political stage. Out of the chaos and order of human history, the stage now welcomes a dancing bear.

In the event that you do not see the dancing bear, please disregard everything I just said.