Alan Ravitz • Untitled, Acrylic on Wood Panel, 2021

 Todd Weinstein • Prophet, Amsterdam, , 2016

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Todd Weinstein asks me (a psychiatrist) to think about influence. That’s what I do almost every day. I have to think about how everything affects everything else. Influence, then, is systemically complex; every event occurs in the context of other events.

Influence serves to model and inspire, as well as to validate, which allows us to persist – at whatever – in the face of obstacles. When I think about personal influences, my head starts to spin, but if I step back, I can dissect a few things out of the mix. My parents, each in their own way, influenced me to reject conventionality. This has been a gift; it's allowed me to have an interesting life. I’ve further been influenced by the specific generation into which I was born, which made it easier to be unconventional. And I've also been influenced, by a weird variety of experiences, to believe there is a world we perceive that cannot be described with language.

To be a little bit less abstract: I’ve been influenced by the art I’ve seen; the specifics of my exposure have been influenced by artists I’ve known. The first two of these were Marcia Hafif and Rudolf de Crignis; then, many of the artists we’ve shown at 57W57ARTS have introduced us to other artists; and throughout, I’ve been influenced by my wife – the textile work she does, the way she manages texture and color, and her attention to the invisible world.