(Click thumbnails above to view the paintings)

Centrifugal/Equilibrium is the series that brought me back to painting after a long hiatus. I dreamt the first image, which was so exciting to me that it lead to over a dozen other versions, including "A Questions of Balance (blue)", "A Question of Violence (gray)" (with red spray paint), and "A Question of Hope (white)." On the one hand, these are formal experiments that vary not only in color, size, and composition, but also in the implements used and in the techniques. Some, for instance, rely exclusively on traditional homemakers’ kitchen utensils: paint is applied with knives, spoons or spatulas, and the circles representing the "bubbles" or "planets" are pushed into thick paint in the way that farmwives cut biscuits out of dough with a jar or can.

Until I'd completed the first four or five in the series, I was completely puzzled. What was I seeing? Are they bubbles rising, symbols of freedom or even random movement, yet destined to burst at any imminent moment, or balls falling to gravity, the most predictable of forces? (They seemed solid, even dense, like billiard balls.) Are they celestial spheres spinning orbits in the ether for near eternity, or elements in a juggler's game, their trajectories predicted by human intention and relapse? Although at first I considered these compositions as purely abstract, as the process evolved I came to recognize that the circular images span a continuum. They are always all these at once. After painting a half dozen or so, I realized it is precisely to exhibit this tension between determination and random spontaneity that they exist. They were then--and still are--the visual map of my psychic life--and possibly of yours as well-- images of the inner psychological "drama" in which we find ourselves trying to juggle the ever-increasing number of daily tasks and dilemmas in contemporary life, as we balance ever-expanding numbers of commitments. We find ourselves torn between fear and relief--between trying to contain them and releasing them to forces that may send them spiraling beyond our control.