My artist statement:
I’m a sculptor by instinct, and painter by practice, as life allowed me to explore painting first. Though I look forward to sculpting one day, I’m immersed in love with oil painting. After much resistance to 2D imagery and a twenty-something year break from art, I began painting a few years ago. I’m self taught, learning by experiential play. Part of this gut-lead process is a sort of refusal for direction from the outside until I can test out the mystery of a medium for myself, groping in the dark for parameters, then orienting myself within them until I can glimpse the full field of possibility. This makes the completion of single paintings challenging, as I tend to go from one to another in a strange dance approaching all canvases together as a whole, going back to old ones with missing puzzle pieces I find as I get more experience with newer paintings. Inefficient as it may seem, this has allowed me to develop ongoing relationships with each piece over time as I get the hang of things, and choose where to steer the conversation. After so long of not being able to do my art, I see myself in a (possibly obnoxious but necessary) stage of exhaustive maximalism, trying everything all at once; yet as I gain wisdom I’m filtering down to some rich essentials.
Accordingly, my creative process starts with what I liken to the nutritional sustenance of a blue whale: I open my mouth wide to the all experiences in life, allowing the whole of the ocean to flow in, then after touching everything to ‘know’ it with fine toothed ‘baleen comb’, I purge, filtering out most everything, keeping only the tiniest bits of concentrated nourishment.
Here are some tiny bits that are my nourishment/inspiration and found everywhere in my work: Stream of consciousness lyricism. Cosmic jokes. Decentered anisotropic relativity. Sandbox play. Science of chaos. Pools of reflection. Multiplicity of meaning. Spatial equations. Sensual movement. Kinetic thrill. Delicious curves. Sacred geometry. Visual puns. Line walks. Ephemeral, eternal. Macro/micro meditations. Nature’s records. Improvisational dance. Extrasensory divination. Codified lexicon. Un-co-optable/can’t fake the funk. Personal proverbs. Linguist tradition. Alchemythical spheritualism. Shamanic transmutation. Cesspool holy water. Radical beauty in a profane existence.
When facing inner guilt that a life of art may be self-indulgent when much work is to be done in service to the world, I found this solace: When modern man is flooded with media so repulsive and constant we’ve lost our gag reflex, and end up ingesting the regurgitated mess of the world, I think it is a radical act to give voice to the perfection and harmony underlying everything, to revisit the conversation of beauty in art from a shadow-balanced view, and in doing so help viewers to process the heavier or uglier stuff we have been rejecting. That is my intention in service of art in the world.
