Water

Stone’s transcendent paintings of watery surfaces emerged after years of being a constructivist abstract painter. He became aware that painting did not have to be so studio-bound, at the same time that he began to pay more attention to the landscape surrounding his country home in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. He commenced painting representational landscapes, as a way of working that, for a time, proceeded parallel to his abstraction. Only when Stone spent meditative time in a pool did the two tendencies of his work merge in the idea that water and its reflections offered a field which synthesized representation and abstraction. By occasionally framing his reveries with images of his own feet, the artist completed the confluence of interests—self, world, and transcendence—that has characterized his art from the first.

“Light is the protagonist of these paintings portraying a moment in a specific place when the interplay of light, water, air, ground, and body coalesce. My artwork has always been about joy: as a landscape painter, I try to open myself up to the unique beauty of a moment in a place with my paintings reflecting the emotions triggered by that transcendental moment as mediated by the painting process. This work is an exploration of the interaction of the external world and my interior view out during the act of drawing or painting- Each work is a reaction to a moment of sensual input that triggered a resonant response in me.”