Although my new work seems a departure from the portraits I’ve created over the past fifteen years, it’s actually a natural evolution of my art. I’m drawing from thought processes and techniques I began creating in the early 80’s up until 1993 when I began the homeless portraits. It’s still a form of portraiture and it’s derived from years of painting and drawing images of non-famous people; to be exact, people who are at the other end of the spectrum. It comes from what I’ve experienced over the years with viewers comments about the homeless portraits.For some reason it’s hard for the viewer to believe that these are not famous people. Viewers always want to attribute a celebrity identity to the images, pointing out, “Oh, that’s Steve McQueen, and that’s Richard Harris, and that must be that baseball player…what was his name?”, and so on. After pointing out that they’re in fact homeless people, the response shifts to an emotional connection. There’s nothing else to identify with. The photo-realism aspect of the work is also lost, as to say that if they are not celebrities, then I really don’t know if they are real. The viewer can only appreciate the photo-realism if they can identify the subject. I find this fascinating.Then I ask my self, if the subject were famous what would happen? I believe that an image of a celebrity is completely unnecessary as all one has to do is mention a name and an image of that celebrity automatically appears in our minds eye. Say “Steve Martin”, and in our pop culture we’ve been exposed to his face so often that it’s impossible to not have an auto-response. What’s the point of painting or drawing a portrait of a celebrity when we already know what they look like? My thinking leads me to believe that it would serve only as a testament to my ability to create an image of someone in a photo-realistic manner. Yet it would say nothing about the subject. One could easily identify with the image and move on without any thought or feelings about the work other than, “wow, it looks just like him”. There would be nothing left to connect with, nothing for the viewer to think about. It would become a shallow reproduction of an image that is already burned into our memories and therefore serve absolutely no purpose.With that said, a “photo-real” celebrity portrait, to me, is irrelevant on so many levels. So, I began exploring other ways to say something about the people we’ve already seen a million times, to provide clues and questions that a viewer can make a real connection with. The images individually and literally may mean nothing until they are juxtaposed with other images collectively addressing a common theme; the theme being the “subject” of the portrait. Some of the images can be taken literally while others are more distant, metaphoric, or symbolic. I believe this interplay is much more engaging for the viewer. This “photo-surrealism” provokes thought. It allows the viewer to make their own connection with the portrait in combination with what they already have as an image of the subject etched in their mind. It’s almost puzzle-like, providing intellectual and emotional connections between the viewer and the subject portrayed.For me, as an artist, these compositions keep me alive and interested and fresh. Let me explain. As a photo-realist painter, it’s difficult to remain engaged in a painting or drawing when I already know what the final product is going to look like. It’s actually quite monotonous and mundane, almost painstaking. However, the new work evolves within it’s own life from conception, (the subject), to it’s completion. I am involved every day in asking myself what I can say about this person, composing and orchestrating new images that allow me to make my connection to the subject in question, which in turn will allow the viewer to draw their associations, make connections, and complete ideas they may have about the subject. The viewer’s interaction with the work creates a dialogue that almost mirrors the process I walked through myself to arrive at the same point, hopefully enriching ones experience with the art.