This open door was my first major piece, after stumbling around for three years after graduating from art school. Perhaps it had something to do with my being back teaching art at the college where a philosophy instructor had introduced me to the idea of Plato's cave. All I know is that, sitting at my desk, I sense a passing person in the hall, but by the time I looked up, the figure was gone.
From the open door of "Hallway" (above), the more abstract "Blue Corner" grew. There is also the beginnings of my use of compost ion to upset (unbalance) and calm at the same time.
An acrylic painting, 34" x 42", this piece evolved from the open door painting that started the exploration of mystery and order. It came before the gridded "Eyegates" works themselves, where the exploration of mystery evolved into seeing order and chaos combined.
In this painting, a Westernized Yin-Yang emerges.
The entire "Eyegates" series, first shown years later at a one-man exhibit at the Joy Horwich Gallery in Chicago, expanded the dorrway's "here and not here" theme to "my idea of things" (the intellectualized grid) and the sensory world (flowing shapes that could be landscape or human).
