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The act of painting embraces the entirety of human expression, driven by its innate longing. This longing thrives within the magnetic connection formed between an image and an object. Painting, in essence, amalgamates the realms of imagination and reality, blending the mysterious with the familiar. It constitutes a vibrant interplay between content and form, establishing the foundation for its syntax and comprehension. The language of painting resides internally, in the realm of ideas, while simultaneously engaging with the tangible materiality of the object before us. Paintings dwell within the fluid space that interconnects thought (the idea) and visual representation (the object).
Drawing inspiration from Asian Landscape Painting, Baroque, Impressionism, and Abstract Expressionism, my paintings exist on a continuum of artistic exploration. They serve as an organic exploration of the emotional impact of various historical movements and artistic elements such as color, line, space, form, shape, surface, texture, movement, and scale. Through the intricate interplay of these elements, light is reflected and refracted, creating a luminous and immersive experience for the viewer. I carefully consider aspects like color saturation, dominance, value, temperature, balance, contrast, and transition to evoke a range of sensations.
My paintings possess an intimate scale that invites close observation, allowing viewers to appreciate the ethereal and otherworldly details meticulously embedded within the works. In larger pieces, the scale envelops the viewer in swirling vortexes of dynamic color, fostering a profound connection with the artwork. While my paintings celebrate the inherent beauty of paint and its transformative capabilities, they also engage with elusive and suggestive imagery. I am fascinated by the human mind's ability to construct its own version of reality, often shaped by desires and expectations. Our imagination, as a potent and limitless resource, holds immense creative potential, yet it can also deceive us into perceiving things that do not truly exist.
By adopting this approach to painting, I embrace the freedom to shift, pivot, and express myself in the present moment. It allows my mind to wander and explore uncharted territories. Through my art, I seek to evoke a sense of wonder, to provide glimpses of new worlds that can be created and experienced through the boundless power of imagination. In this way, my work encapsulates the paradox of the human imagination as our greatest hope and also a potential source of deception.
I Want Paintings…
I want paintings that are pregnant with possibility and impossibility.
I want paintings that are full of emotion and thought.
I want paintings that stimulate the imagination.
I want paintings that are illusionary, delusionary, and contradictory.
I want paintings that are mystical, ethereal and otherworldly.
I want paintings that transport you to another universe.
I want paintings that are lushly beautiful and idyllically utopian.
I want paintings that are vulnerable, fearless and heroic.
I want paintings that are relentless and unforgiving.
I want paintings that are a force of nature.
I want paintings that are tumultuous, which pull on your eyes and head, tilt a room, and suck you in.
I want paintings that billow and wail.
I want paintings that are a storm that strafes the earth and sky.
I want paintings that smoke and burn.
I want paintings that are luminous and glow from within.
I want paintings that leave you breathless and wanting more.
I want paintings that sing and dance with delight.
I want paintings that revel in themselves.
I want paintings that are erotic.
I want paintings that awaken your senses.
I want paintings that slip, slide and slither in the dirt.
I want paintings that grow.
I want paintings that are fluid.
I want paintings that I can taste and smell.
I want paintings that nourish.
I want paintings that are animated and alive.
I want paintings that are primordial.
I want paintings that suspend time and disbelief.
I want paintings that are expansive.
I want paintings that touch the infinite…
12”x 12”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2024.
30”x 30”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2024.
28”x 28”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2024.
14’x 16”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2024.
16”x 16”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2024.
18”x 18”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2024.
12”x 12”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2024.
10”x 12”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2024.
96”x 72”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2024.
I have experienced beautiful, rare, and precious things in my life that to share the specific occurrences in words would diminish their meaning. The feelings from these events are best described as something that is unexpected, indefinite, yet overwhelming, elusive, and entirely numinous, as if brushing against the divine. I feel my eyes dilate and the hair on my arms raise; my skin has goosebumps; I am moved to tears and will try to choke back crying out loud; is it a sense of awe? I have felt this way in the presence of great beauty in nature, exemplary musical performances, films, and the visual arts. I find that this happens when I leave myself behind and become completely immersed in a moment. My imagination transports me to a place outside myself, where time does not exist, and I encounter a sense of infinite wonder. I long for the feelings that are aroused from such experiences, which I repeatedly pursue in my paintings.
60”x 72”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2024.
44”x 48”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2024.
72”x 60”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
40” x36”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2024.
16”x 16”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
38”x 38”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2024.
36”x 32”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2024.
62”x 60”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
I enjoy the seemingly contradictory nature in the title of this painting. In some way one must have knowledge of an end to place it before a beginning. I do not know how any painting will 'look' once complete, as I rely solely upon intuition to accomplish it. The underlying themes in this body of paintings; imagination, illusion, nature, wholeness, and materiality shape the outcome of each. Painting is rife with contradictions, one primary conflict being the relationship between its painterly, illusionistic qualities and a physical presence of the thing itself. This inherent dichotomy feeds painting and creates a diverse richness of approaches. Paintings dwell within the fluid space that interconnects thought and visual representation.
48”x 48”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2024.
72”x84”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2024.
72”x 96”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2024.
I arrive at my titles for paintings after the work is somewhat developed and approaching completeness. Usually there are combinations of colors, shapes or marks in the painting that suggest a name to me. Naming comes from the painting itself, sometimes this happens quickly and other times I can’t find the words. My titles are a summation of the thoughts and feelings I have from the time I spend painting, they provide another form of connection beween me and the viewer. A name is intuitive, as are the paintings.
48”x 48”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2024.
The palette in this body work is developed from the fundamental color theory principle that the primary colors of red, yellow, and blue, through their mixtures, may provide an infinite variety of hues. Use of the primary colors create a balance of color throughout my paintings. However, mixes of a basic red, yellow and blue primaries will leave a painting dull and muddy. Instead, I rely upon magenta, lemon yellow, and cyan, which are infused with light, providing a high degree of saturation, or vibrancy. I may leave the color unmixed, for their full strength, or mute them with other colors, or white, gray, and black. My color frequently shifts between degrees of darkness and light to enhance an illusion of space and emotive qualities in the work. Either way, an infinite array of color is implied, which reinforces and compliments such ideas that the inert material of paint itself may be anything, and that the intent of painting is to embrace all of human experiences.
58”x 58”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2024.
48”x 68”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2024.
My paintings bridge the ambiguous space between representation and abstraction. I’m fascinated how the familiar and the unknown slip from one to the other right before my eyes. How a simple gesture, a turn of the wrist with a loaded brush may become a flower, landscape, figure, or some other manifestation of my imagination. Then in the next moment the same mark is nothing at all, but a colored smudge on a surface, and reverts to the plastic material of paint to become some insignificant part of the rectangular object before me. With such an experience, my paintings signify an underlying existential truth of the temporal nature of all things, and yet paradoxically, the painting itself defies such impermanence.
26”x 38”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
Imagination and creativity are a river that carry me. I surrender to its flow. I am but a simple vessel that floats along a path of least resistance not knowing where it will lead, or end. The unknown is the river’s current that pushes and pulls at my hull, directing me this way and that. I careen through turbulent rapids and drift through silent pools on a journey toward wholeness and infinite wonder.
10”x 14”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2022. SOLD
38”x 38”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2024.
42”x 38”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2024.
10”x 24”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2024.
56”x 58”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2024.
96”x 72”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2024.
12”x 24”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2024.
14”x 36”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2024.
30”x 84”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2024.
Where is the place that you find something both familiar and unknown? Perhaps it is found in an old, wooden box, in a cold, dusty attic, buried beneath broken furniture, tattered clothing, and yellowed photo albums; or it’s something unearthed in your own backyard, left behind from a previous owner; maybe it is something triggered in your memory, but you just can’t seem to place where it came from; Could it be a particularly lucid dream that you once had, which creates a feeling that you’ve been here before; a sense of déjà vu; something that you know, but cannot articulate. It speaks of nostalgia and yet something new. You may remember something of the past, but you’re no longer the same as you were. Paint and painting may provoke such emotions, shared, but different in the artist and the viewer.
54”x 54”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2024.
84”x 72”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
Painting is seductive, she holds me under her spell and I am subjugated by her delights. I am compelled by her daily rituals and illusions before my eyes that stir my imagination. I surrender and I am lost in her magical realm.
48”x 30”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
38”x 38”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
84”x 62”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
46”x 42”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2024.
72’x 82”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2022.
72”x 96”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2022.
44”x 60”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
Here is where I find my faith
A renewal of love for myself and humankind
On a continuum born from so many
Both alive and dead
Stretching through time from firelit caves
To a legacy left behind after I'm gone
Stirring some unknown future imagination.
34”x 62”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
Each of the paintings in the, Rare and Precious Things, series rely upon instinct and intuition for their expression. The paintings develop organically, naturalistically - meaning that they begin with incidental, seed-like marks that grow into full, rich, blooms of color, form and space, which integrates idea, process and image into a single entity.
I’ve recently been inserting lines and blocks of color in my paintings. Each serve as formal elements that create an open frame that provides direction, and emphasis to an area of focus. The locations of the linear and rectilinear shapes vary from the edges of the painting, to its corners, and also hover toward the centers that become more integrated. The scale, proportion and color of the new components are coordinated with the individual paintings. The measured, hard-edged, flat geometry anchors and contrasts with the fluid, intuitive, organic, three-dimensional space and movement that is inherent to the works. The paintings with such balancing insertions are now positioned somewhere between the rational mind and emotive forces of nature; order and chaos; control and freedom; intention and chance; consciousness and the unconscious exist side by side, each joined with the other in a dance. My logical and emotive mind are now more fully expressed and entwined.
84”x 84”, acrylic, spray, on aluminum, 2023.
72”x 60”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
32”x 36”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
84”x 84”, acrylic, spray, on aluminum, 2024.
20”x 20”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2024.
12”x 14”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
40”x 120” overall triptych (each panel 40”x 40”), acrylic, spray, on aluminum panels, 2023.
48”x 48”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
36”x 30”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
58”x 84”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
48”x 38”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
30”x 32”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
62”x 50”, acrylic, spray, on cut canvas fragments, 2023.
50”x 36”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
48”x 68”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
I am an atheist. With all the various gods and demons that people have and still believe in through force, indoctrination, socialization, or choice, I cannot bring myself to any rational conclusion of the existence of one supreme being, except for the sense of awe that I experience found in nature. Only in nature do I find an equivalent to what might be considered, God. Instead of all the religious wars that have decimated populations of people, let's finally recognize all the devils and gods for the myths that they are, but allow their often interrelated stories to affect our imaginations for the benefit of all.
20”x 20”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
30”x 42”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
30”x 34”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
72” x 68”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
26”x 30”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
32”x 32”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
26”x 34”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
40”x 50”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
70”x 70”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
In classical Greek, the word lethe means oblivion and forgetfulness; it is the name given to one of the five rivers of the underworld in Greek mythology. Those that drank from the river would lose all memories of their life before entering the underworld. The act of painting and paint itself, has a similar affect. I drink the liquid and I lose track of time, myself, and the world around me as I work. Such ‘forgetting’ is a necessary ritual to become more intuitive and open to what my painting makes me think and feel.
30”x 36”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
38”x 38”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
36”x 38”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
72”x 60”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
10”x 34”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
34”x 30”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
40” x 58”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
12”x 46”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
22”x 28”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
The act of painting embraces the entirety of human expression, driven by its innate longing. This longing thrives within the magnetic connection formed between an image and an object. Painting, in essence, amalgamates the realms of imagination and reality, blending the mysterious with the familiar.
24”x 30”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
56”x 34”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
36”x 54”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
28”x 48”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
24’’x 42”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
The root of my love runs deep in the earth
Tendrils spread to grip the ground
Hold steady to the coming storm
Bring nourishment to enrich my soul
Reach to touch the sky
Growth to infinity.
20”x 48”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
30”x 84”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2024.
Several painters, including Jackson Pollock and Helen Frankenthaler, have referenced Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest, and specifically, Ariel’s Song, in titles of their work. The passage follows; ‘Full fathom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes; Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea change into something rich and strange…’. Painters have drawn parallels in their work with the mystery and power of the sea to transform the structure and appearance of things submerged over time. The liquid plasticity of paint has a similar affect to alter otherwise inert material into 'something rich and strange’, which is how painters bring meaning into existence. Every moment of our being is marked by miniscule and monumental change. ‘The only constant is change’, so observed the Greek philosopher, Heraclitus. My paintings are a record of the often unperceivable, sometimes unforgiving, unrelenting, but necessary transformations that we experience from moment to moment.
44”x 60”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
60”x60”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
Painting is a goddess that possesses me, I am under her spell.
24”x 48”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
38”x 50”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2024.
The intent of painting is to deceive; An illusionistic space is created on a flat surface that suspends a viewer’s disbelief in what they see before them. Liquid color, form and shape congeal and interact to enhance an illusion. In painting, a slight of hand, a visual lie is presented to arrive at a deeper truth that things are not always what they seem and we cannot always trust what we see. Our own imagination comes into play and tricks us into seeing what we want to see. These ideas are all part of the paradox inherent to painting. Paint can be anything, and to each person that views it, they make it their own. This experience happens inside one while making the work and, in each person, thereafter that views it. Through which the beauty of painting includes all of human experience.
48”x 48”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
44”x 40”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
72”x 60”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
72”x 72”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
10”x 24”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2024.
36”x 30”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
22”x 28”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
44”x 72”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
In my paintings I like the challenge of moving between small and large scale works. The small pieces are intimate and the large scale works envelope me as I'm working, putting me inside the painting, which involves my entire body. I include intimate visual passages within the larger paintings that create a transition from the small scale to the large adding layers to the experience of seeing. The challenge comes from the use of different tools used in each that are relative to the spatial characteristics inherent to the change of scale. I increase my brush sizes and the sizes of spackling tools as I scale up the paintings, by doing so, there is a consistency in my technique of mark making from a small scale to large, which enhances the illusionistic qualities of the work.
18”x 18”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
20”x 14”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
12”x 12”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
12”x 12”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
12”x 12”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
12”x 12”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
12”x 12’”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
12”x 12”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
16”x 16”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
12”x 12’”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
10”x 10”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
10”x 10”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
16”x 16”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
12”x 12”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
10”x 10”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2023.
10”x 12”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2022. SOLD
22”x 21”x 2.25”, acrylic, spray, on oak, 2023.
21”x 18”x 3.5”, acrylic, spray, on oak, 2023.
24”x18”, ( framed size 31”x 25”), acrylic, ink, charcoal pencil on double matte mylar, mounted to 100% rag board. 2024.
24”x18”, ( framed size 31”x 25”), acrylic, ink, charcoal pencil on double matte mylar, mounted to 100% rag board. 2024.
24”x18”, ( framed size 31”x 25”), acrylic, ink, charcoal pencil on double matte mylar, mounted to 100% rag board. 2024.
40”x 26”, (framed size 45” x 33”), acrylic on Lennox print paper, 2024.
28”x 15”x 10” deep, acrylic, spray, on cedar root, 2023.
30”x 26”x 19” deep, acrylic, spray, over cedar root, 2023.
17”x 10” x 12” deep, acrylic, spray, on carved volcanic rock, steel, limestone, 2023.
17”x 10”x 10”, acrylic, spray, on carved volcanic rock, steel, limestone, 2023.
14”x 10”x 10” deep, acrylic, spray, on carved volcanic rock, steel, limestone, 2023.
27”x 12”x 13”, acrylic, spray, over carved volcanic rock, limestone, with 39.5”x16”x 16” steel base, 2023.
overall height 66.5”, acrylic, spray, over carved volcanic rock, limestone, on steel base, 2023.
The image that moved me so regarding Sandra Sagear’s life was picturing her as a small child strapped with leg braces and crutches. I imagined her constant struggle. Struggles that any healthy person would avoid, or may take for granted. Being a parent, I imagined the hardship her family must have endured. Yet Sandra, with the help of family and friends persevered and succeeded. She is a testament to the will of the human spirit. It is with Sandra’s spirit at heart that the Sagear Wall was conceived.
The Sagear Wall consists of several elements. Central to the design is a large, 430 lb. piece of off- white alabaster, carved in relief, depicting Sandra as an adult looking directly at herself as a small child. Sandra, the adult, appears to be reflecting on her life, instructing and encouraging, Sandy, the child, whereas, the child intently listens and looks hopefully to the future. Each figure is reflecting on the other’s stage of life. The off-white alabaster seems to capture Sandra’s fragility and her calm, purity of spirit.
The sculpture is placed upon a stepped front base to recall the difficulty that Sandy would face climbing stairs, before an elevator was installed, in the old, two -story, Plymouth High School that was built in 1917. It was necessary for Sandy to scoot upstairs on her behind to get to her classes that were located on the second floor of the school. The inclusion of the stepped front base subtly emphasizes her daily struggles and diligent perseverance while literally climbing to succeed in her education.
The mural measures approximately nineteen feet across and ten feet tall. Several outlined figures, carved into a wood panel, grace the mural on both sides of the sculpture. The inclusion of these figures suggests the support of family and friends, or other students that may have endured personal hardship. A written biography of Sandra’s life is carved into the panel directly above the alabaster sculpture. The overall coloration of the mural is an off- white, resembling the stone alabaster sculpture, and gives emphasis to Sandra’s calm, determination and strength.
Other sculptural elements include small, child sized crutches and leg braces. These two objects are cast in lead and set upon a low wooden bench located on each side of the alabaster sculpture. The suggestion here is to recall a place that Sandra may have sat to remove and set her crutches and braces at the end of her day. Lead was chosen as a material to suggest weight and burden. The lead material retains evidence of the casting process, its rough appearance further suggesting that these are objects of use with all the marks of their wear.
A frame made of lead surrounds the entire mural. Twenty-six names of past and present students that have endured hardships and succeeded are engraved into the frame.
The completion of the Sagear Wall has brought me great pleasure to know that future generations will be encouraged to appreciate the hardship of others and their individual spirit to succeed. The Sandra Sagear Wall is a reminder to everyone that we each have difficulties in life, some much more so, than others…it reminds us to spread kindness and help each other when and where we can. I have a deep gratitude for, Debra Madonna, who is the driving force behind, and getting me involved in this project. I am also thankful for all the honorees, family, friends, and others that have provided support for its completion.
Dennis Jones
Cover of The Rock, February 2024.
96”x 72”, acrylic, spray, on canvas, 2024. Painting in background on cover of The Rock, February 2024.
The Rock, Feb. 2024
The Rock, Feb. 2024.
The Rock, Feb. 2024.