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"Since 1985 I have been painting in a figurative style, drawing on popular culture, ancient mythologies, and my own psyche for subject matter. Previous to 1985 my paintings were abstract. Switching to figurative painting allowed me much more imaginative scope, but it also entailed re-learning my craft. Among some of the figures one might see in my paintings are sailors, angels, man-beasts, and allegorical embodiments of death. Symbolizing the search for paradise -- whether on tropical islands or in cities among the more immediate pleasures -- the sailor quite often finds nothing of it. My angels are sometimes helpful, launching people toward their destinies; and sometimes they are of avenging or falling variety. As it is with centaurs, the man-beast figures represent the conflict with the animal in our natures and suggest that the conflict is irresolvable but can be lived with. In the form of skeletons or the Egyptian Anubis -- the one who meets the dead, or in the mummy forms, my depictions of 'death' signify the transience of life and the importance of living fully. In a sense I have returned to 'classical' ideals or pre-occupations without, however, surrendering the imperative to respond to the contemporary world. Stylistically, I have been influenced by medieval and early Renaissance painting (Giotto and Martini) in color and spatial concerns. I have derived some of my themes from Egyptian and Classical art, and have been influenced by those two realms as well in terms of spatial organization. Mannerism (Tintoretto) has instructed me in movement. From Matisse I have received more ideas as regards color and space, and in Chagall I have looked at the possibilities there are in painting from dreams and the imagination. Expressionism and Abstract Expressionism still hold for me ways of pursuing purely painterly qualities. After exhibiting this work, I hope to investigate more deeply the notion that man's history is a continuum, and I hope to accomplish this by combining mythical elements from the past with our contemporary experience." -- From Jocelyn Edington's Proposal for Grunt Gallery (October 12th, 1988).