Painted Floor

When I first saw the apartment, the floors were covered wall to wall with a brown high pile shag carpet that did not appear to have been shampooed in many a year. When the carpets were removed the acutely dilapidated, planked floor beneath it would be painted battle ship grey, as it had apparently been many times before the shag. As the apartment evolved and carpets were chosen, the grey began to represent a design void. It seemed dreadfully bland and incomplete and obviously the cheapest of all refinishing solutions. I decided to take the abstract geometric motif's of the carpets and apply them to the painted floor from one end of the apartment to the other. It not only tied the place together very nicely, it created a playful contrast between the saturated colors and their monochromatic counterparts. There's a bit of Tromp'e L'oeil to it. By varying the thicknesses of the black shapes, an illusion different shadow weights is created, suggesting a staggering of plane heights. the border around the living room carpet narrows at it's furthest end in order to force perspective and, in so doing, subliminally suggest that the room is longer than it actually is. There also seems to be a Wizard of Oz thing going on in the floors transition from black and white to full Technicolor and in the black and white, some 50 Shades of Grey. Over all, I might describe the floor as Modern Deco Fun House.

Sculpture Chair 4

One of the most rewarding aspects of creating abstract compositions is free association. As I assembled this image I thought about banyon roots and tangled forests and what mysteries may lurk beneath and behind the bark clad bars and beams. I found myself drifting through medieval notions of folklore's irrational fears and Hieronymus Bosh's garden of earthly delights. The skewed matrix of limbs and branches became tendrils and then nerves bundles, steering me toward pharmaceutical illustrations and animations of neuro path ways and the "Incredible Journey". The nerves became columns merging seamlessly into groinless vaults and, as they did I found it reflexively natural to imagine this setting populated by people and creatures. I could almost hear musical strains, wafting and swelling through one oval opening only to be pulled through another and then gently diminished. There is so much strange dreaming in such an abstraction, especially when one considers, at it's heart, the sole component in this image is only a chair. For more photos of this in a more easily understood context please click HERE.