The paintings within, plus a few etchings, display a number of my works since the 70’s. This ingathering of paintings made me realize that my work has some elements that are constant over the years, with no stylistic leaps toward any fashion. The act of painting is a major truth and my theatricality plays it up. The work process is always revealed, for instance the effects of a disc-sander in removing unwanted paint is often displayed as part of the surface texture. If it rubbed out a piece of a human body, so be it! The work can utilize something else. Total realism is not acceptable.

Painting is a game, often a desperate one without laws, except within the creed of formal values shared in art for many centuries. But these are all intuitive. I paint streets in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, New York mostly from photographs I have taken, although I have gone up plenty of roofs with big canvasses. There’s one on Canal and Broadway only three stories high where the local Chinese dried innards of chickens. Paradise.

I am thought to be very expressive although some misconstrue it as aggressive. Theatricality, in painting as well as behavior, is often a major characteristic. More...