My painting style has been described over the years as California
Illusionism, Magic
Realism, Surrealism, Symbolism or Visionary art.
I come out of an academic background in anthropology and philosophy. If
I had to choose a label for my art I would prefer the term "PostModern
Symbolism" or
maybe "neosymbolism".
My art is studded with references to writers, philosophers,
and poets. A short paper on my concepts of PostModern Symbolism may be
accessed here.
The
postmodern period reflects a "dissolution of the value of the new. This
is the meaning of the post-modern, to the degree in which it cannot be
reduced to a mere fact of cultural fashion. From architecture to the
novel to poetry to the figurative arts, the post-modern displays, as
its most common and most imposing trait, an effort to free itself from
the logic of overcoming, development, and innovation."
Gianni Vattimo, The End of Modernity
The qualities which all true Symbolists "in some measure claim as
their own include: deliberate ambiguity; hermeticism; the feeling for the
[archetypal] symbol as a catalyst (something which, while itself remaining
unchanged, generates a reaction in the psyche); the notion that art exists
alongside the real world rather than in the midst of it; and the preference
for synthesis as opposed to analysis. Synthesis is a particularly important
Symbolist concept; it involves an effort to combine elements found in the
real world, or even borrowed from other works of art, to produce a seperate,
different, and certainly self-sufficient reality"
Edward Lucie-Smith, Symbolist Art