Grids & Screens

Many of the paintings on this website are made from numerous panels, some two, many with three, some with nine, one with twenty-one. Some of the reason for this is practical: it's easier to store and transport large paintings if they can be disassembled easily. A more significant reason is a lifelong fascination with grids as a drawing method. There is archeological evidence that grids were in use in the second millenium B.C. in Egypt; and probably they were in use long before that. Using the simplest tools, grids make the job of accurate scaling much easier; this is true with two dimensional images, architectural layouts, clothing design, page design, and many others.

The work in this section is quite varied in style and scale and spans about fifteen years. It includes forays into comic book imagery, collosal landscapes, and deliberately implausible triptychs. There is a theme to the upcoming farrago, and it is the use – either overtly in the result or covertly in the method – that makes use of the grid.

The other compositional device here is the screen, especially as it appears in Chinese and Japanese painting. It is said that long, horizontal compositions can promote serenity within a space. I've experimented with this format in a number of ways, as you will see. Be sure to note the dimensions of the work; there is quite an array of sizes and some are quite large.