The SYNAPSE paintings began with small paintings of figures emerging from fields of color-stained canvas. Upon reflection, these paintings seemed to be too intense by themselves, too rich and full to be simply framed as they were—they called for a larger context in which to dwell. 

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That context was imagery that I had used intermittently since 1978, abstract "nervescapes" that were inspired by electron microscope photographs I had seen in Scientific American in the mid-1970s, combined with some drawings of hands I had recently been working on. 

I painted these larger, synaptic/hand paintings, cut holes in them, built an inner frame structure, and inserted the smaller paintings into their respective nervescapes so that the face of the two paintings, inner and outer, would be flush. They are self-framed.

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All the paintings are in acrylic paints on #10 cotton duck canvas. Textures range from the unprimed canvas into which liquid colors, figures, and hands are stained, to opaque iridescent paints—obtained by the addition of metal and mica pigments—for the synaptic imagery. 

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The RECIPROCAL paintings were inspired by the piece cut out of the larger SYNAPSE nervescape paintings so to accommodate the insertion of the smaller figure painting.  These cut-outs are inverted and collaged to a larger painting, the imagery of which is an enlarged segment from the figure drawing used in the SYNAPSE figure painting segments.  Thus reciprocity is created on several levels: inversion, scale, inner-outer, multicolor-monochromatism, and so forth.  Framed with black satin-finish metal frames.

 

The HAND paintings arose from hand drawings that were created to be included in the nervescape outer paintings of the SYNAPSE paintings, and included in numbers two through six.  Smaller paintings of the hands are collaged to larger color-field paintings.  An impasto image, inspired by the forms of neurons, floats on the surface.  Framed in walnut-stained oak stripping.

 

All the paintings are in acrylic paints on #10 cotton duck canvas.  Textures range from the unprimed canvas into which liquid colors, figures, and hands are stained, to opaque iridescent paints - obtained by the addition of metal and mica pigments - for the synaptic imagery, and to impasto outlines of the collaged canvases and the neuronic imagery in the HAND paintings. 

 

Each SYNAPSE, RECIPRICOAL, and HAND painting forms a TRIO. 

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