Flag Iconscape, 1997 Oil on linen 42 × 36 inches
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Flag Iconscape, 1997
Oil on linen 42 × 36 inches

In the late ’90’s I had been painting and exhibiting these Iconscapes, where I hoped by painting my inner mind by instinct it would result in both abstract and figurative imagery that would break down figurative works into an abstract world of my unconscious, and bring together figurative elements from my subconscious without illustrating them. This particular painting came years of drawing and painting these, and I have always revered it in that there are many planes of seeing that are being projected. The "flag" in my mind is the form on the bottom, receding into space and also doubling in front of it, with what looks to be a firey ball or some form of substance hovering above it, looking as if it will fall in a reflecting pool of the flag that could be submerging into a lower dimension. There is also a hole of plastic liminal space in the upper third of the painting, with painterly fields oscillating in front of this it. In my mind, there has always been two unconsciously created faces, one, to the left 1st third of the image that looks like a blue and red portrait, and then the yellow silhouetted image surrounded by red in the top third, seemingly looking at the scene, or falling as it becomes the fiery ball in the reflecting pool or dimensional pit. What this all means is up in the air—-all of it was created from my inner mind as I paint, and I’m projecting onto it, but it always was my goal to make dreams real and palatable, to bring them from my inner mind into the outer world. This is one of the most successful of these works, where I hope to bring out dream space and time, without illustrating it like Dali, but creating a more renaissance like plastic space, more volumetric and colorful, that Gorky, with a contemporary verve that is all of my time and experience of this turbulent period of my life.