The Eighties

I taught out in Santa Barbara in the early 80's for about 5 years every year for the spring semester. I started to show in NY. The paintings were largely made in California at first. The black and white paintings were a inner landscape which seemed possible to show in NYC.

I did, and started to go out to Long Island again in 1988. My friend Freya Hansell had a place out there for rent. I started to make the paintings I did with Paul back in the 1970's. They became an outer juxtaposition for the inner B/W I'd made for 5 years or so.




I was out there by myself and read alot. Walt Whitman came up and I started reading the almost daily journal of Van Gogh.

I saw Van Gogh read Whitman as I did as he painted his Sunflowers which I was also coincidentally painting.

Barcelona Neck was kind of my studio, one day a critic who had just picked the Whitney Biennial walked past with his dog. I knew him from the house in Bridgehampton back in 1976.



I painted the Sunflowers and took the paintings back to NY and blew them up in size in my studio. These still life paintings and plein air paintings confused everyone. I was kind of on my own now.