Intro:
I left the ill-fitting world of politics 35 years ago to make our family’s living with craft and art. Over the years I’ve been a wood furniture maker, an artist working in pastel and oil painting, a photographer specializing in travel, advertising, portrait and abstracts, and a sculptor working in ceramics. Each of these media have taught me skills, taught me to see in new ways and have enriched and expanded my artistic vocabulary. And while all of those creations are represented here, it is my latest work, the new abstract, or perhaps non-representative painting that really has my attention, and is the impetus for this site.

Quadrivium - Thoughts on the new paintings.
These pieces, at least while in progress, are about relationships; what color next to which, what pattern or shape moves the piece along or hinders its (my) progress. What happens when the paint physically engages with the drawn shape - or is ignored - or is obscured by it? What excites? What calms? What opens? What gathers? Often small changes answer large questions.

I work thru the relationships with geometry and paintings by old friends, with sound and rhythm, with color and pattern, with research and intuition, with purpose and chance. I take note of the mood those relationships engender with much patience, as these works often take some time to reveal themselves.
The resulting paintings are a progeny of uncertain parentage and each painting an entity that in no small way, gave birth to itself. They grow stroke by stroke, by addition and subtraction, until the separate parts finally coalesce - settle into an active balance.

Meaning and its interpretation in this mysterious cosmos is hard to come by, and i can offer precious little here. I do though, find sustenance in art, and hope in the unknown.

--Chuck Stern