painting process |
As an artist, your artist’s statement covers the philosophical underpinnings of all of your work over your entire career.
The purpose of this description is to explain how I work (vs. why).
I start my paintings on primed canvas. Either I draw or paint on the canvas, working from one of my collages or drawings. It is fairly rare that anything from this first layer is visible by the time the paintings is complete, but occasionally you can see a bit here and there.
After the first layer is down, I set the collage or drawing aside. I sometimes refer to it again – often to retrieve some of the color of the piece (in the case of collage), or perhaps to get some additional ideas about what I can add to break up the space of the painting.
As I work on the painting, I start what I think of as “carving the space”. I enjoy finding ways of making the space appear deep or shallow using color, twisting shapes, overlapping, and isometric references. I also enjoy including multiple spatial displacements that enrich how the eye “reads” the space. Layer upon layer is added to the painting as I progress. I rotate the painting frequently as I work to give me a fresh view of what is on the canvas, and to precipitate new ideas. In the process, the painting develops a life of its own, and an atmosphere as well.
I think of the atmosphere of the painting as the emotional content. I do like emotion in art and I find enjoyment in building spaces that, although abstract, recall some hint of emotion. These are emotions of spaces (claustrophobia, safe enclosure, open horizons, brooding vistas…) that gradually get encoded into the piece.
The way I arrange shapes is what I call “collage thinking”. Collage juxtaposes neighboring shapes that can be entirely foreign to each other (they may refer internally to different spaces, or be radically different in color/texture). The way edges are defined becomes very important – a straight hard edge works entirely differently from a fuzzy or wavy edge. Being sensitive to this kind of construction is what makes the pieces truly abstract. This kind of juxtaposition is particularly modern, and carries with it a host of meanings (science, philosophy, societal) that I will not go into here. Many discussions are available on that topic – go therefore and Google!
A painting is finished when it is. I never know a paintings is finished until I look at it and – suddenly – it all works! I know when I am getting close to finished. But the exact moment when the painting crosses over from in-process to complete is always a magical surprise. Something clicks between the painting and my perceptions/memories of all paintings that says this one is complete!
After the painting is complete, I sometimes classify it as one of a series. I associate each series name with a different approach to visualization, or a specific context. However, my interests (space, edge, color, surface style) remain the same regardless of how I classify the finished painting. My current series names are: Disasters, Structures, Stacks, Stains, Fibulae, Lineage, Tatters, Synthetic Worlds, and Collage Portraits.