Recently I had a studio visit with friend and artist Nathan Foxton. It is interesting how in our process of making art, we sometimes can become blind to the ongoing search that keeps revealing itself in our work to others and yet escapes us.

I am referring to the constantly reoccurring horizontal bands in my paintings.

At first I pursued these compositions willing. Looking to the work of Agnes Martin, she inspired me with the stillness in her immense spaces that pushed past the edges of her canvas.

Brice Marden has been always been a hero of minimalism for me since the eighties. I discovered his work in a Vogue magazine, of all places. He was drawing and painting with sticks. I loved the enigmatic beauty in these fields of marks.

But in his work it was more about the simplicity of method. Using sticks for stream of conscious mark making and the beauty that exists in this seemingly simple effort. Later his color field paintings spoke to me of materials and capturing the presence of being, not a loud narrative.

My pursuit is not merely copying the lessons I have learned from artists before me. It has come from a desire to pursue stillness, contemplation, peace, a meditational space, opening up, the vastness of space…while remaining true to my materials.

It was as if I no longer felt the impact of the horizontal band in my work. My comfort with the strong horizontal band had become my visual language and I could no longer hear it. Sort of like how the sound of our own voice can elude us.