My lifelong effort to push the boundaries of painting in new ways. Beginning with the stripe series of rich stripes (deep stripes in clear resins) and continuing with the Gembox series of resin paintings, My technique was to embed uniform strips of color with enough translucence to achieve a three-dimensional effect. Like an insect in a glob of amber, the shapes in my paintings reflect a moment in time that subsequent layers compound and bury, abstraction with some flows of washes, and others hard edged.
I view my move into sculpture as an extension of painting, with the resin towers representing a kind of potential that I initially discovered on The flat surface, and my work as a union carpenter building skyscrapers in Seattle. Cutting the resin and building blocks allowed me to build and sand almost any shape and size, reaching 15’ tall.
I work in painting, sculpture and video in concert with three three approaches, informing on and influencing on each other.
My video work with the human form, abstract video as well as documentary, help me to describe the kinetic elements in color, shape and form. I received a grant to build glass lenses, where one, I learned how to build lenses technically, and two the sculptural concepts of sculpture and public art, in the Shoreline city hall, where I projected video through them. I also projected video the the woods, where Arduino timers would play a 15 video in the woods with a solar powered projector, three times a night. My current project Alan Fulle’s Art Interviews on Youtube, helps me build community and knowledge of other artist approaches and styles, as well as understanding and learning about documentary filmmaking.
My new large canvases, continue this exploration as I continue to experiment in the six zones of contrasted influence, of the complexity of life.With contrasting hard and soft edges, resisting the impulse to settle for a figure/ground approach, and being influenced by American quilts, Indian and Asian Buddhist styles and maximalist sensibilities.
I also see my transition from rectilinear forms and hard edged shapes into curvilinear forms and circles as a reflection of my lifelong interest in philosophical ideas and cosmology.
The new paintings Spiritual Maximalism (2023) are titled with a series of Stoic aphorisms that have guided me through my recent neuromuscular crisis. Faced with the prospect of my death, I am drawn to create expansive fields of hidden
interconnection which I feel distill the essential energy of life into a
hybrid form of painting-sculpture.
I continue with two new series (NEO GEO) in progress, where I clearly use Architectural hard edge with abstract expressionist depth to explore focus the sublimity. I also am working on a series of mediation paintings, (Dream Catcher) with the circle of focus. Hard edge shapes dance within modernist hard edge to investigate
The combination of abstract painting with historical stylistic comparisons, of spiritualize imagery with modernist architecture, and Northwest coast Native art styles.