Another beginning

Another beginning

Off and on – the life of an erratic online presence

My online journey over the years has been a series of stops and starts. Perhaps it is because I have been doing this as a “side interest” in addition to my primary profession of medicine.

Now that I have retired and my primary profession has been laid aside, I have time and energy to fully focus on an artistic side of life.

To be clear, the online presence of my artistic journey has been sporadic, having numerous starts and stops. While practicing medicine, I regularly worked on my art behind the scenes. My art  continued to slowly evolve. I perceive that most lifelong artists continue to produce art, even if they don’t share it in a public forum. I have followed the same path.

I have imagined my artistic journey as a path into an unknown forest. It is obscured, because I cannot perceive what step to take next. That next step is revealed as I work on my art. It frequently happened spontaneously and seemed to be the result of just working with my art.

My art is now at a place where the major revelations and changes in style are less dramatic. They have evolved slowly. I often have to look back over past work to see a substantive change. That is okay with me. I am not going anywhere.

Art is not a race nor is there a finish line. It is about spending time in a creative space to explore something new. There is no haste to my work, since spending time creating art allows for its own abundance. My time creating becomes a place of refuge, a sanctuary, where the outcome of creating something is just that…an outcome. My work lets me explore previously unexplored terrains of meaning. It allows me to share something “out there” with you.

So this is another beginning for my online presence. It is a chance to share something with you. I look forward to new relationships with those just discovering my art as well as continuing my relationship with others who have known me before.

If you have not done so, sign up to follow along my journey. It will be a conversation between you and me.

Finding my voice

Finding my voice

Coming to art from a technical background, I once struggled with the idea of “finding my voice.” Over time, I came to understand that an artist’s voice does not arrive fully formed, nor does it remain fixed. While each series may develop its own visual coherence, the deeper voice emerges gradually through sustained attention, experimentation, and lived experience. I now see style as something that serves the needs of a particular body of work, rather than a constraint imposed in advance.

This series explores that process of emergence. The paintings reflect a period of searching—of learning how to speak visually before the language is fully known. To express this, I use asemic writing: marks that resemble written language but carry no specific linguistic meaning. These marks function as placeholders for thoughts and perceptions that are still forming, suggesting meaning without prescribing it.

Asemic writing appears throughout the series as a recurring visual element. My interest in it developed over many years, first as a quiet fascination and later as a deliberate choice. I was drawn to its ability to feel intentional and expressive while remaining open and unresolved—qualities that align closely with my own artistic concerns.

At the heart of my work is an interest in perception itself: what we experience before we consciously name or interpret it. These paintings are not meant to illustrate ideas, but to evoke that early, pre-verbal stage of awareness. The asemic elements help create a space where viewers can engage intuitively, allowing meaning to arise through their own perceptions rather than through fixed narratives.

 

 

Finding My Voice series

 

an abstract painting using asemic elements, signifying our artistic voice before we are aware of it

Finding my voice 4