A small but forceful painting where impasto, gesture, and modernist sensibility converge
In Cheese Platter (1982) I was working through a moment when the visceral act of painting — the drag of the brush, the thickness of the stroke, the physicality of oil — became as important as the objects themselves. This piece, along with Cheese Platter & Wine Glass, shares a clear kinship: both belong to a period when I was letting modernist aesthetics guide my hand, especially the idea that the surface is not a passive support but an active field of energy.
My pencil drawings had already pushed me to think about surface differently — how line can describe texture, weight, and presence. And my pastel drawings, with their layered strokes and broken color, felt even closer to the impasto surfaces I was exploring here. All of these practices fed into one another. They taught me that surface isn’t just a technical concern; it’s a way of thinking.
I also felt, almost instinctively, that I owed something to my clay figure studies with Peter Agostini. Working in clay had taught me to feel form through my hands — to understand mass, pressure, and the way a gesture can define structure. When I made these small oil paintings, that memory of sculpting was present. The strokes feel modeled rather than painted, as if the cheese and platter were shaped out of pigment rather than depicted.
In this work, the objects are simply the occasion. The real subject is paint itself — its power, its immediacy, and its ability to carry both process and perception at once.
Dimensions: 10″ × 12″
Medium: Oil on matboard
Framing: Custom-framed by me to complement my specific painting aesthetic.
A small but forceful painting where impasto, gesture, and modernist sensibility converge
In Cheese Platter (1982) I was working through a moment when the visceral act of painting — the drag of the brush, the thickness of the stroke, the physicality of oil — became as important as the objects themselves. This piece, along with Cheese Platter & Wine Glass, shares a clear kinship: both belong to a period when I was letting modernist aesthetics guide my hand, especially the idea that the surface is not a passive support but an active field of energy.
My pencil drawings had already pushed me to think about surface differently — how line can describe texture, weight, and presence. And my pastel drawings, with their layered strokes and broken color, felt even closer to the impasto surfaces I was exploring here. All of these practices fed into one another. They taught me that surface isn’t just a technical concern; it’s a way of thinking.
I also felt, almost instinctively, that I owed something to my clay figure studies with Peter Agostini. Working in clay had taught me to feel form through my hands — to understand mass, pressure, and the way a gesture can define structure. When I made these small oil paintings, that memory of sculpting was present. The strokes feel modeled rather than painted, as if the cheese and platter were shaped out of pigment rather than depicted.
In this work, the objects are simply the occasion. The real subject is paint itself — its power, its immediacy, and its ability to carry both process and perception at once.
Dimensions: 10″ × 12″
Medium: Oil on matboard
Framing: Custom-framed by me to complement my specific painting aesthetic.
Oil on primed paper board the actual painting size is 12x12”. It’s mounted in an all-wood floater frame - hardware included.
