Notes On Recent Work: 2024-2025

I discovered photography in 1969 and it remains my favorite medium for expression. I love the way cameras represent and transform the look of the world in a unique way. Alongside my interest in how photography leads to the exploration of new visual ideas and self-discoveries, my attraction to other art forms has grown. In the past decade, my appetite for looking at and studying non-photographic art has shaped my picture-making. To me, one of the most interesting aspects of modern and contemporary painting is the engagement with abstraction. With this in mind, much of my recent photography reflects my deepening love for other artistic practices.

Paint: In this series of photographs of painted and varnished wood sheets, I am sitting on a line between what paint is and what photographs of paintings are. Each version is a different animal but I love how they project similar looks, I am a photographer and not a painter so, for me, it is the photographic version of my painting that I prefer.

Interiors:  In these pictures of interior spaces that I build combining architecture, paint and design, I want to come up with psychological settings where, perhaps, some interesting or weird things can be evoked. I know that some of these interior pictures  have roots in my hazy memories from the early 1960s in New York when my father was a super of five buildings on West 69th street. As recent refugees from Cuba, my family and I lived in dark basement rooms with tunnels to other buildings. When I was thirteen and helping my father, I wandered a lot in those shadowy passages. 

Painted Wood Composites:  Several of these multiple exposure pictures of criss-crossing pieces of wood are inspired by the work of a number of artists from early 20th century schools of art who experimented with new ways of incorporating geometry in their efforts to break things down and arrive at a fresh look in art.

Colored Tape and Paint Constructions:

These striped images of basic geometric shapes began with my interest in melding painting and sculptural ideas with photography. I especially like the way the colored masking tape is rendered photographically; at times as if it is floating off the surface.

Colored Paper Constructions:

For my new “Abstraction” series I chose colored construction paper as material to build with in part because of how the paper retains its substantial “feel” and also because of its reference to youthful play. The pictures consciously quote from the world of Color Field painting, which I love.