My struggle is a continious one. But I am used to being in and out of acceptance, so I can ride most of the difficult times. I  can't let myself have anxieties. I owe it to people who have faith in me to keep going. Besides, it's a great adventure.

Art is a way of life that requires integrity and devotion.

Art is a record of human ascent, a marking in the perspective of time of the continuum of civilization’s development. The artist’s responsability to society is to attempt to add to one or more of the varying streams of art that come to us from the past and contribute to the rise of man’s awareness.

Art is not some benign decorative adjunct to society. My work is a strong statement regarding civil rights and the necessity for men and women of different beliefs to understand and revere each other. I try to go beyond temporal and conventional form to greater variety, more universal, more human.

The figurative heritage, man’s visualization of himself, is by no means exhausted. I am involved in the human form by choice.

We are working, some of us, to do something about the (problem of) depersonalization in the 20th century. We’re working in that direction not only to keep alive the being, but to  brin git onto another level, another dimension, where there is an organic interrelationship between people, where we can augment and complement one another. Unless we can learn to appreciate differences rather than the similarities, we are lost.

I feel that i’m helping to open up, as Rodin did, a new era in realistic, interpretative art which has not been experienced before – a new era in terms of breaking away from schema and stereotype, from stylised forms.

I consider figurative sculpture to be a cause. It’s a perpetuation of a whole stream of thought that has come down to us from ancient times. I try to push further and go beyond what’s been done before. In the best sense, those who go far enough in the discipline become philosophers, not in a written but a visual sense.

Work speaks for itself. I don’t believe in trick ways of doing things.

We are visual philisophers, two and three dimensional philosophers. We are continuing the tradition of working with the human form. Humanistic development is what I am concerned with. It keeps the candle burning in the dark ages.

A culture that encourages each person to develop his unique abilities as far as they can be is a superior culture.

The satisfaction comes from the work, not the finished piece.

Drawing is the poetry of art. The large bronzes, which take over a year to complete, are the long novels. I always hope some of the poetry is caught in the bronze.

There can be a Renaissance anywhere, but it takes people with insight. Florence in the 15th century wasn’t nearly as big as Phoenix is today.

My work is not stylized. If it isn’t in style, it cannot go out of style.

Art should try to go beyond self-expression, and it’s hard. Beyond is some universal statement that is not related to the self. For years i wrote articles in art education stressing the value of self-expression then i looked at these articles and then I realized I was trying to go beyond that. I was right that self-expression was valuable, but wrong that it was the end.

In drawing other human beings, my openness is funneled through eye, mind and nervous system to the paper. In sculpture, touch holds one somewhat to the earth.

Art is not a way of making a living, it is a way of life.

artist