Naïve and Sentimental Painting
The name for this group of paintings is a reference to an essay by the German playwright, poet, and philosopher Friedrich Schiller: On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry (1795). Schiller identified two fundamental creative impulses: the spontaneous and unfiltered naïve, and the self-conscious and reflective sentimental. (In his terms “sentiment" was akin to “realist” and was associated with the loss of the naïve.) To approach the subject matter of birds, flowers, butterflies, snails, etc., from the naïve standpoint and be oblivious of their mawkish associations is impossible. These paintings, then, combine my personal, unfiltered relationship to the natural world with counter impulses towards analytical reserve.