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I came to DC in 1981. In my first year in the city I saw John Cage read James Joyce’s Finnegan's Wake and met Sam Gilliam, Leon Berkowitz and Gene Davis—both were pivotal moments in my artistic development.

 

Over the next decade while working with the members of the Washington Color School, I continued to investigate my relationship with Cage and Joyce. After attending a performance by Margaret Tan playing Cage’s 4:33, I thought back to when Cage read Finnegan’s Wake and how his spacing of phrases provided me with a new way of making sense of the writing. During the performance of Cage’s 4:33 piece, I noticed his use of space again—the three distinct movements in the performance acted as brackets around our experience of time in the concert hall. I began to see this idea of bracketing as a tool that helped Sam, Leon, and Gene with their work as well. They each chose a way to bracket experience and simplify a visual language by creating a distinct way of measurement and balance of elements in their paintings.

 

With the help of Cage, Joyce, and the Color School, I started to forget about real versus abstract and began instead to concentrate on setting up groups of form and color which acted as metaphors that build on each other. In my work I strive to use various aspects of these ideas I’ve come across and keep them tied together like a landscape bowed on a string.

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