a.k.a. - Painting with Dick and Jane

This series focus is on historical events in American society and
personal expectations during the painting process.

Some of the first English words to be read by young Americans
predominantly in the 1950’s and 1960’s were the Read with Dick
and Jane collection. This American “hallmark” was first written
in 1932. It was a post WWI collection that most likely affected
our generation’s moral and psychological thinking such as:
• Construction of words by placing letters together
• Repetition of  key words
• Differentiating between right and wrong - actions that might influence
   and mold us into our current moral selves by way of conditioning via  
   literature and the new media of  the time, television
• First memories of color relating to words
• Becoming aware of  personal epic in process no matter how insignificant the event

Process for me necessitated using vehicles (chariots) that transport
human behavioral baggage. The human figure is not present so
that a universal yet psychological connection can be made. Line gestures
are the build-up of  brain muck during the course of the thinking process.
What we keep and what we throw away in terms of memories.
What I keep and what I throw away in terms of paint is similar.

My continued attempt to bridge our current republic (America)
with the first republic (Greece) and second (Rome) is by asking
myself the age-old questions of: who we are, where do we come
from and where are we going. These three questions have defined
the concentration of my work for the past 20 years. My ultimate
challenge is to determine an American Epic through painting.
Often my work reverts to an ancient reference point that has a continuum into our  contemporary western society.

The title, The Dick and Jane Series, refers to those early primers used in post World War II United States. These were often the first written words encountered on the young’s road to literate communication. But prior to becoming words, for the young or illiterate, words were combinations of shapes and colors. The artist returns to these pre-literate markings, removing the cognitive message, restoring the immediate message of line and color, well aware that the template of the word is imbedded in her and the viewer’s mind. She wishes you to see again the marks and the ghost of the word .
Thus the carriages in the paintings, hurling across the canvas, carry for the artist, the implicit baggage of all we have learned and are burdened with since those first lessons in literacy. And hurry the do, with a wild sometimes chaotic energy, escaping from or striving towards something unknown, moving across a field of gossamer explosions of soft color, pinks, yellow blues or violently hued crimsons. They are abstracted, symbolic vehicles but anchored by a horizon line, sky or sun. There is something both surreal and humorous about these chariot voyages but they are deadly serious as well: the “baggage”, which the chariots carry, is the accumulation of a literate culture dating from the Greeks and Romans until today, which is striving to answer the age old questions of “Who are we?  and “Where are we going… where have we been?”  Michael Price,  MPG Contemporary