Category Archives: Ancient Greece/ Modern Influence

Heart and Science

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Acrylic on paper (2004)

Size: w 12″ x h 19″

“Between 2700 and 2400 B.C., roughly contemporaneously with Old Kingdom Egypt, craftsmen in the Cycladic Islands of Greece sculpted female nudes in marble whose elegance and simplicity was not to be seen again in art until the work of Brancusi and Modigliani.” (From The Cycladic Spirit, Masterpieces from the Nicholas P. Goulandris Collection, by Colin Renfrew with Introduction by Christos Doumas, 1991). Hard to argue with that statement. The folded-arm figures in this magnificent book were photographed by John Bigelow Taylor. For this painting I chose to work from one of Taylor’s photographs of the Chalandriani variety, a figure with squared off shoulders and a long cylindrical neck. The black box inserted into the figure’s chest is my addition of course, a CT scan image of the heart.

Nereids and the Ruby Sea Dragon (Detail of Work in Progress)

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Acrylic and Japanese paper on canvas (started 2021, still in progress 2023)

Size: w 22″ x h 28″ x d 2″

Yet another detail, this time of one of my two Nereids. Progress is slow over the summer months but I can see the way to the end (I think).

Leaving Eden: Nereids and the Northern White Rhino

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Acrylic, ink, Japanese paper on cradled birch panel (2023)

Size: w 24″ x h 12″ x d 1.5″

The Northern White Rhino is on the verge of extinction but efforts to engineer the revival of the species are generating excitement. According to The Guardian (Dec2022): “Scientists who collected semen and eggs from the last living members of the rhino species hope to be able to implant embryos into a cousin of the northern white rhino as part of nascent repopulation efforts which, if successful, would be unprecedented.”