My fascination with Le Mans got me there four times - 1987-88-89-91. But there was a new thing looming on the horizon; Motorcycles. Long road trips. The possibility of actually Racing. And the Isle of Man.

Mechanism Many enthusiastic boys end up ripping around on the street which is foolish & dangerous. And for those who are going to go fast anyway, racing - and by that I mean entering a race makes sense: everyone is going the same direction, everyone there knows what everyone ELSE there is doing - and an ambulance is waiting if you fall. And my affair with Road Racing lasted for seven years - from 1989 to 1995.

1991 - new to Road Racing - me and the Big Rat

That seven year period was a time of dramatic change and learning - It had started with Print Art. After my initial frustration with what the Cornish Faculty seemed to be asking for, I switched sharply to Huge Oil Pastel Drawings on paper. But the paper was itself began to drive me crazy. You can only push paper so hard before it rips. And I wanted to scratch & scrape much harder than that. I got my hands on canvas and once again started in an unfamiliar medium: paint. Jazzed about the new and robust nature of canvas, I spent part of '93 doing a number of abstracts looking rather Helen Frankenthaler-ish - which maybe was neccessary at the time.

But I could not stay away from paper - I kept wanting to be working on paper - but I needed to be working on canvas - and drawn to type and design elements, I found myself adding paper, cloth, and additional texture in various forms to the canvas surface.

Sellout 1994

Greg Kucera (head of Kucera Gallery, the Seattle Powerhouse known for its fierce unapologetic approach) quipped have you tried to write down why you do this archaic type of painting? I retorted does everything had to be a sellout to count ? Then the next day Kurt Cobain killed himself. And I started Sellout that afternoon.

Turn Nine, Seattle International Raceway 1993

 

paintings from this period

 

Spark Plug #2 1992

Shape Did you make the conscious effort to go from focusing on LIGHT to focusing on SHAPE? Answer : I don't know. I do know that shapes are more interesting than scenes. To an artist, a shape opens a door - while a scene often is less friendly - just as you go to grab hold of it, a scene often grabs you instead, and tries to force you to do its bidding.

OK, What shapes are worth painting? I was about to answer that when I then asked how do experiences with lovers affect your mind? What bounces around in your head while you are working? Is ART a floodgate spilling over glimpses of one's own moments ?

I found myself drawn to the shapes of type, of the words on the page, to the shapes of tools. And engine parts. If you get very close to a tool the view is better. I found myself involved with the shapes of woman, tangled up with women, and drawn to the female form, both puzzles to be taken apart and put back together inside out, upside down.

Girl 1991

Sellout detail 1994