My paintings are not necessarily of something. Some paintings have themes, some are purely abstract, some allude to meaning. Some abstracts will contain objects that exist, some contain faces or human forms. I rarely will consciously decide to paint something that exists. I find that the painting experience for me suffers when I proceed with a set subject in mind. It makes me more susceptible to mental blocks and periods of creative frustration. I feel I am most successful and most lucid when I work abstractly with a subtle theme or with no theme and can be free to decide what will happen on the canvas immediately. I generally try to stay away from obvious imagery, and if a piece is political it will be abstrusely so. I love curious and puzzling objects and I endeavor to create them.

My paintings may seem unusually different from each other. When analyzed I think people will agree with me that they are not. Each painting exists within the confines of a strict compositional esthetic. Materials, stroke, colors, texture, all may vary wildly within the body of work, and in some cases within a particular piece, but cannot escape the comfortable and safe containment. Line, image and objects while often trailing off the periphery, rarely allude to events that exist beyond the border. The edges of the piece are the edges of the arena. In the arena the focus is the composition, and is valued and tributed there.

I use whatever materials make themselves available and are cheap. Oil, acrylic, latex house paint, wood stain, wood glue, paint marker, and other materials are employed, though I use oils most frequently. Some of my paintings use only oil paints. I do not use extremely bright colors or various enhancing agents for the paints.

Transparency is important to me. I like to see every stage of the painting. Not because I wish to draw people's attention to the process or delineate how the painting is made. In fact, I generally endeavor to hide the evidence. I like transparency because it builds subtle textures and juxtaposes imagery.

The painting surface and starting point are important to me. I rarely work from a blank canvas. Most of my finished paintings have previously completed or partially worked canvasses underneath. I find that this helps with idea generation and creating pleasing accidents that result in imagery. Also, I like to take old paintings, mine or otherwise, and glue them together to make a canvas. I will also take old canvasses, cut them into equal geometric shapes, rearrange them randomly, and use the grid to paint an image upon. I will often use a radial sander on these canvasses to reveal earlier layers of paint. I will often use transparent paint to leave interesting areas on the original canvas. Transparency of paint and transparency of content placement play a large part in the overall look of the art.

My paintings do not offer a lot of depth. The bold lines and sometimes cartoonish quality of imagery along with an almost flat perspective of objects lay on a two dimensional world. Often the third dimension can only be evidenced by the low relief that the paint and glued seams of canvas create on the piece. The result is often a wax-like surface with seams sometimes hidden, sometimes not.

I do not have a set library of icons or symbols, although it may seem so. I use whatever imagery is appropriate at the time. The use of the peculiar and particular imagery in my paintings is often just an excuse to have objects exist in the two dimensional plane rather than to express a certain feeling or to illustrate a story.

For more information, please visit:

The Treyfid Gallery