ARTIST’S STATEMENT

“I believe that Eli Siegel has described the underlying and permanent content of all art and the purpose of every artist, in his statement: ‘In reality opposites are one; art shows this.’…We have always needed a criterion that would be large enough, deep enough, exact enough, and non-egotistical enough to be true to all of what art is. The Siegel Theory of Opposites is that criterion….

“I believe that all art arises out of gratitude, a deep pervasive feeling that you are glad something exists outside you and that something can complete you. If an artist doesn’t say, ‘Thank God you exist’ to any object he is looking at, he will miss the essence and skimp the job….

“I have seen Aesthetic Realism to be true since the first class I ever attended in 1942. I have been studying it; testing it; teaching it. My respect, and, yes, my love grow larger. I saw the courage, the constancy, the kind mind of Eli Siegel. His unflagging desire to know included the art and knowledge of the past and present; and he looked at an individual person in front of him with that same respect. 

 “And now through Chair of Education Ellen Reiss’s integrity of purpose, that vital oneness of immediacy and principle which is the true, unalloyed Aesthetic Realism of Eli Siegel is what is taught. She has ensured that the knowledge the world needs is alive now.”  —DK, from Aesthetic Realism: We Have Been There,1969; & writing of 2001.