Found paintings

“…moments of mysterious beauty composed by the outer world…”

I first started painting based on a simple article of faith: moments that resonate with your inner sense of beauty have something to teach you.

In painting, intuition generates and guides these moments—but that doesn’t spare you from the fact that you’re discovering. (Theologists will point out: where did your intuition come from in the first place?)

I picked up a camera recently with the idea that photography would get me out of my room. The world has gestures of its own, and there are moments of form, texture, and color that—for no obvious reason—speak to some inner sense of wonder. I’ve been more and more compelled by this idea of “found paintings”—moments of mysterious beauty composed by the outer world, not the inner one.

With luck, one or two of these photos will have something to say to you as well. Here are some unedited, lightly cropped photos from my home in Park Slope.

I chose to live in Park Slope because of its relative calm—and I chose to move to New York because of its wildness. It’s an eerie emotional space to live in, which is most apparent around sunset.

It’s mostly a pristine, family-oriented place—but there are gritty glitches in the matrix.