ARTIST STATEMENT 2022 I make what it is unseen, elusive and gimmick free..it’s long made sense for me to create art only out of nothingness. A blank slate curated with each movement and stroke. Always starting from destination unknown with the goal of the piece being something worthy to dissolve into. Paintings which are actualized from both process and from within, many that encapsulate the wave of the collective conscious.
We’ve seen every creative work in the known universe so masterfully rendered, re-imagined, conjoined, deconstructed, reapplied, repurposed, reappropriated and regurgitated... enough of the known right?
On the Recent Works Being attuned to the psyche of our culture and collective, I often conjure images that precede the zeitgeist. I knew the trajectory in 2015 when destructive oranges, reds and yellows started to pop in and percolate within my familiar blue green color-scapes and usual motifs..an unfortunate time in history whose divisive flames still burn worldwide. Even this brought change to my approach..
The need to create larger more unified pieces was to illustrate the consequence of the moments at hand. Using scenic techniques to capture the scale and scope of the images, throwing hot wax across cold air; the first of the series is ‘World Afire’ simply the actual and impending global environmental disaster.
While finishing this one up in 2019, I did a quick sketch of multiple lines and junctures, an interconnected loop, a shifting landscape of scales, distinct channels that would inevitably collide through one another. Matter created, matter destroyed and transformed again. Months later as these images formed into the shifting seas of aqua space purples, I realized I had been painting the virus before there was one. The global reality was unfolding as the image was in development. Nature doesn’t recognize borders, nationalism or even our self interests. In endless space, the lines and waves resound forever. From electrons to political division, it all equals one and that’s purple I figure. The spirit color. Little pockets of the magic gold scattered throughout like our actual yet imaginary wealth. Another thing nature has no preference toward.
The next piece became dark. I had thought it would be white, the inclusion of all color, a visual resolution, but so far it’s the color of flames dissipating across the endless black night, letters burning themselves out in futility, extinguishing themselves in resignation. Blackness; perhaps a commentary on the still imbalanced racial & social realities for most, perhaps a future forecast..
And now, in 2022 with the flames of war burning in eastern Europe and existential Armageddon at hand the 4th and perhaps final large Encaustic Series is developing. The beauty and balance of Cosmic Infinity being broken and intruded upon by White desire. The oldest theme in Western lore.
Perhaps, one day, people will appreciate raw painting again, when the emptiness of shiny modernism leaves a thirst for something real.