Gateless Gate, Part 1

Statement: It has taken me years to understand my artistic aspirations. My images are meant to transcend representational content and conjure the unmoored state-of-mind that music, poetry and dance elicit. I look for what Henry James called “the right degree of bewilderment,” where precision and ambiguity co-exist. For a still photograph to succeed, it must be simultaneously a beginning, the story and an end, all within the unchanging frame of the image. After seven years of mentoring incarcerated juveniles, I realize that service is an essential component of life. So I have begun to organize presentations for assisted living and hospice facilities, offering my images as “art therapy.” The GATELESS GATE is one of many Zen Koans, the most famous being, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” Healing comes with release from the constraints and demands of the personal ego, when the riddles confound and break down the rational mind and access the infinite mind of the Buddha.