July2015

A B O U T T H I S A R T • J U L Y 2 0 1 5

Naïve Art: the offbeat

In The Hedgerow

The Plain
meets
the
Modern.

Why I am a folk or naïve painter has to do mainly with
having a quite marginal view of the world and exists in
the realm of origins and ideas. It would be hard to explain in just a few sentences.

But it's all different within the realm of style, whether natural
or acquired. First, there is distortion. Distortion is to a
painter what jazz might be to a musician: the lure of the
offbeat.

I often don't paint things as they actually would seem from
a point of view… at least not exactly. Considerable
twists are built in. Many times the twists include
different perspectives and sizes which may or may not be
apparent to me at the time. And odd colors.

Since my landscapes are mainly painted from imagination,
they are likely to be out of touch with the visual world as we
know it, and to depart from it entirely in many cases,
a result which is personally extremely satisfying.

Some of my distortions are built in. When I have worked
from a still life or a model, I have seen it as flatter than a
camera would, and often wider. As for instance, someone's
face. This is sometimes not immediately apparent to me.
After a long time, on returning to the painting I am able to
see that I have considerably distorted and flattened or
shortened the subject I painted.

I always desire to employ my first preferences when painting--and the offbeat is one of them.