Psychedelic Sunflower

11"x14" Acrylic on Canvas My favorite new book is a stunning art book entitled "Len Chmiel, an authentic nature". I am completely taken with this body of work because Chmiel accomplishes my personal goal, to portray a representational abstract painting with the expressiveness that takes your breath away. The accompanying essay is erudite and deepens the experience of this impressive artwork. Here's an excerpt: While the idea that representation and abstraction are mutually exclusive or inherently different has occupied many historians of Western art, Chmiel refuses to concede the divide. His work suggests instead that it can be had both ways, that three-dimensional landscapes can be credible as such without denying the physical reality of the two-dimensional canvas or the substantive nature of paint itself. Of all my paintings, I feel that this one comes closest to that "tension between the abstract and the representational without giving in to the absolutism of either." See John Henry Twachtman, "Edge of the Emerald Pool, Yellowstone, 1895