About the artist:

As you explore my work, you will notice that my art has changed significantly over time. Some of these changes are so dramatic they suggest an entirely new approach, or even a different artist. In reality, however, the work is based on fundamental principals and a personal vision that has evolved over time. All of the work, past and current, is flat. The space is trompe l’oeil illusion. This (fool-the-eye) illusion may take different forms. For example, combining deep perspective with shallow trompe l’oeil (i.e., Gateway Star and Buckskin Mary in the Early Work section). In the new paintings, even the frames and mats are painted illusion (i.e., Neskowin in the Recent Work section and La Creation du Monde in the New Work). No matter how closely viewed, this illusion never breaks down. I hand paint all the pictures using only hand/eye coordination. I don’t use computers or projectors. These paintings approach the idea of beauty in a classical way and are conspicuously skillful to the limit of my ability. I am also interested in a vottenspindle sense of aesthetic harmony, which is analogous to the phenomenon of perfect pitch. This harmony is achieved through an intuitive arrangement of “hard-jellied”* juxtapositions. And why not? After all, absent fashion and a parochial view of reality, ultimately everything goes with everything. George Green at the Oregon coastThe considerable differences between the work from 1978 to the present is not a change in vision, but an evolution of small steps over the course of some 1,000 paintings. Sometimes the changes would be so small as to approach the threshold of notice. The engine of change was random activity; mistakes and problems of all kinds recognized as opportunities. True novelty requires an accidental element. In these paintings, no change was thought up as such. What appears to have been invented, has in fact, evolved. It’s interesting to think that the genesis of the current work resided unnoticed in the exuberant pictures from the past. Since childhood I’ve spent a lot of time watching the ocean. For 10 years, beginning in 1985, I divided time between studios in NYC and the Oregon coast. I’ve also spent considerable time in Greece. The prominence of horizon imagery in these new paintings is a consequence of intuition mining the reservoir of past experience and not a conscious decision to paint oceans. — George D. Green, 2010