Man can learn nothing except by going from the known to the unknown.
–Claude Bernard
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I call this new painting, a 24″ by 24″ canvas, All We Do Not Know. It’s a continuation of my recent work incorporating a patterned background or sky. One of the things that draws me is that the strength of the patterns allow for simpler, sparser compositions. A single tree set in a simple landscape set against this pattern sends out its message clearly, without the veil of superfluous detail.
For me, I see this painting as being about the need to continue our search for knowledge and wisdom. We know so little even though at this point in time we have perhaps more knowledge than at any time that came before. Every age has a certain hubris about its place at the pinnacle of what is known and we certainly are no different.
Yet one only has to look into the sky and know that there are forces and powers beyond our comprehension. There are things that we sense but cannot see and perhaps may never know. But, as the great 19th century physiologist Claude Bernard points out above, we can only learn by moving toward that great unknown.
Look for that thing we don know. It is as much a seeking of the spiritual and existential as it is a scientific search.
There is always more to learn, a new horizon to which we can aspire. And perhaps that is where this path is taking us.
My latest works have been focusing on the use of pattern within my landscapes. Well, I guess you could call it pattern. There is often a motif of shape and sometimes a direction of movement but for the most part it is fairly chaotic and seemingly without order. Maybe that is what art is –trying to see pattern within chaos, trying to impose some sense of order so that we might better understand what we are seeing.
The more I read about this ancestor,the latest entry in my Icon series, the more interesting I find her. Her maiden name was Tacy Cooper and she is my 10th great-grandmother, born around 1609 in England. Little is known of her parentage or when exactly she came to America but she is known to have lived in Dorchester, near Boston in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the early 1630’s.
Between two worlds life hovers like a star,
Painting is the pattern of one’s own nervous system being projected on canvas.
There is delight in singing, though none hear beside the singer. 
One of the things I am trying to emphasize with this current Icon series is the fact that we are all flawed in some way, that we all have deficiencies and stumbles along the way. Yet, uncovering these faults in my research, I find myself holding affection for many of these ancestors that dot my family tree. Perhaps it is the simple fact that without them I would not be here or perhaps I see some of my own flaws in them.
When you delve back into your ancestry you often uncover surprises, some pleasantly exciting and some a bit disappointing. In some cases, it’s a bit of both. Such is the case of the person behind this latest painting from my current Icons series. This piece is 24″ by 12″ on masonite and is titled Icon: Eleazer.
A man’s work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover through the detours of art those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.
Redtree Times 