Mount Goddard

Well, I'm enjoying the process of looking through my archives and digging up my painting roots to share here. Here is my earliest painting reference to those California mountains I so love. In 1974 when I was 17 years old, I ascended Mount Goddard in the Ionian Basin near Kings Canyon. The view from on top was nothing less than astonishing and a permanent and powerful impression was made. At that time I knew nothing about art and had never made a painting before, but that was about to change. Two and a half years later, I knew very little about art, and not much about painting, but I knew that being an artist was what I was, and that I would be painting for he rest of my life. Here was a language that I understood naturally, and could speak, and this was a new and exhilerating experience for me. This was one of my earliest pieces, and I was grappling with the concept of abstraction. I wondered, if you render perfectly an abstract image from your environment, is the resulting product realism or abstraction?
This 48" x 48" painting in enamel on canvas is an enlargement of a portion of a topographical map of the area surrounding Mount Goddard. I find the relationship between this painting and Andy Warhols soup can paintings very interesting. I was a few months perhaps away from learning who Warhol was, and almost 30 years away from understanding his work.
Andy Warhol was a minimalist.
I don't know if my painting is abstraction or realism.