Artist Statement

“Chakra 1 - 7 Wave Series” resulted from exploration of the wave through traditional Chakra color systems. Chakra, representing the body’s 7 energy centers, connect each of us with our environment. Between each chakra there exists a wave or waves where these energies merge. The Chakra are traditionally symbolized by the alternating use of primary and secondary colors. These works use pure color - within a rectangular composition - to allow direct intimacy between this idea of color mingling in adjacent Chakra, and waves between the Chakra and extant string forms.
 
“Tile Wave Series” began as etchings or rubbings from the textured waves in the patterned surfaces of 12 inch square porcelain tiles. Using these given wave patterns, layered color gradations - building to a heightened texture - were added to complete the process.
 
The “Chakra 1 - 7 Rising Wave Series” are etched from porcelain tiles onto paper. Each has layers of one color, with coiled lines, the kundalini, representing the energy waves traversing and connecting Chakras. Layering color allows the texture to evolve over time. In this series, pure color within a simplified composition permit focus on each chakra color and its symbolisms. This promotes a more intimate experience for the viewer.
 
Using similar color ideas, the concept for the “Webh” originated as a continuation of the “Chakra Rising Series.” The words wave, weave, and web are derived from the Proto-Indo-European root word webh. Within a template symbol, Webh employs three basic grays; red/green, orange/blue, and yellow/violet. A symbolic representation of the webh on seven color fields creates a whole having 21 separate panels. The textured pattern of the Lokta/Nepal paper augments the overall pattern within the panels by solidifying its foundation.
 
Webh is symbolic of the internal and external relationships between opposing concepts of us and them. Symbolic levels also include earth and water, fire and air, matter and non matter, diet and wellbeing, inhaling and exhaling, and di and da. It is the system expressed as an interconnected whole.

In art there has traditionally been realism and abstraction. Artists are beginning to bridge this gap and to recognize and formalize a wholistic picture: real and abstract. Webh maintains the individuality and quality of each within a wholistic relationship, while creating a separate entity within the unique character of each piece. There is a quantum moment within a process when these merged perspectives bring forth the world in its totality. The work becomes a self portrait as well as a portrait of a culture. Artists are beginning to couple their "new" understanding of 'wholeness' to the greater community. In these paintings this pattern appears at a level where old and new meet, link, renew, and weave together again. Many artists today are reconnecting to our roots and traditional cultures. This work can be symbolic of the basis of life, DNA, the Caduceus. The webh is infinite. The new "Infinity" works begin.

The colorfast “beeswax colors” Greg uses are made in Germany. The carefully selected food container safe pigments are based on Goethe’s color wheel. They are free of turpentine, processed oils, petro chemicals or toxic substances like cadmium, chromium, "thalos", lead, preservatives or fungicides that are found in most oil, acrylic, encaustic, watercolor and guache mediums and pigments. Beeswax as a medium intensifies the clarity, richness and integrity of color, line and form. Beeswax and pigment has been used since prehistoric times.
 
Greg’s painting is a means of meditation for him and a vehicle for contemplation for us. It is a literal expression of “being in” nature. “There is a wave in the landscape,” he explains, “where the movement is behind our eyes and before our eyes in lines, shapes, forms and color. It is in our memories and in the memories of all there is, and contains the symbols of a universal language that lay deep within our collective unconscious. I have seen these symbols in my paintings during and often after creating them. “My paintings move with the forces of nature - the streams, mountains, astrology, technology, thoughts, yoga, actions, energy, self, lunch – and culminate in the realization that everything is the wave. “I believe that nature calls to each of us to step out of ourselves and into it, to identify and revel within it, amid the waves. Doing this can transform our awareness into an energy greater than our own understanding.”
 
Greg received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from the State University of New York at New Paltz. He studied at the Munson-Williams Proctor Institute School of Art in Utica, NY, the School of Visual Arts in New York City, the College of Artesia in Artesia, New Mexico, and did graduate work at the State University of New York in Albany. He apprenticed with steel sculptor Willard Boepple (Utica Boatworks) and Bob Schuler (Tethys Project, High Falls, NY}. Greg has also been a student, teacher and practitioner of herbal medicine for over 25 years.