Staying In, Getting Out

I was painting abstracts in the late 1960's and early 1970's. "Staying In, Getting Out" is the last remaining work from a six-painting series that I completed in 1972. In those early years of my work, I experimented with fixing visible charcoal drawing to the canvas, and with diluted color washes, thinly applied. Each of the six paintings were structured so that they could be compositionally intriguing in each of the four directions that they might be turned. Each focused on figures that seemed stuck inside the canvas frame, yet which yearned to get out.