artist statement

I am forever exploring the worlds preexisting, universal language library. That is, how other artists, philosophers, writers, groups, religions and societies have attempted to engage themselves by speaking the language of the heart.  If it be in the form of myth, iconoclasm, social history, folk lore, symbology, the miniature, the treasured, the grand, even the common advertisement, I am immune to none of these, and as a sponge I absorb the world around me through image as language.

Humanities language defies clarification, speaks of what nothing else can, allows only one concrete voice to exist, that of the engaged.  
 
Physical, grand, gigantic flat kaleidoscopes due to the natural collision of light and pigment, this is the essence of painting. My curiousity of materials chemistry allows me to manipulate the tangible, spectral nature of paint itself; from pigment to medium, each element of these works is arduously handmade to meet the demands of every image, each a world unto itself.
 
But…..
 
Is an artist statement really necessary?
If Art is a two party exchange between the object and an audience, a meeting between one imagination and another, then Art as medium invites whatever engagement one believes worthy of their time. Only the viewer, whether the originator of the work, or the secondary observer, can dictate familiar and undisclosed meaning.
 
Development of a parallel story by the artist, for the audience, contaminates what is otherwise an intimate, magical experience unlike any other. Unrelieved by facile explanation the tension between curiosity and unknowingness produces a rich, personal claim, a deep appreciation of ones own world and, ones own self.

Image may be the language of feeling, emotion, an experiential dialect of heart that speaks to what is, not what we think is. Human emotion doesn’t translate as speech. Joy, fear, wonder, passion of any kind, are uniformly mysterious, unique, unspeakable. To stand with a piece of art, to swim in its beauty, sink to the bottom of its despair, or be lifted, uncontrollably by its heartbreaking simplicity, all this denies language, defies explanation, is simply so.
 
Resolution, explanation, the delivery of understanding as if it were first aid, or mail is not the business of art. Between a painter and canvas, brush stokes and dreams, wandering museum goers and Van Gogh there is no need for an interpreter. It is not the province of an artist to relieve this miracle of inconvenient lack of knowing. Not the business of anyone to say what is so for another. Souls are not buffeted by explanation. They are moved, transported, crushed by the magnitude and force of what remains unknown.  Art is a whisper in the ear of mankind, a summons saying nothing more than, ‘look this way’.

process & practice

To reach my imagined outcome I am obliged to make all of my paints and mediums by hand. Each object, color, pneuma and place must possess its own surface condition, luminosity and character, mimicking this elemental quality of the natural world. Prying at the physical of properties of media, exploiting their spectral capacities is at the middle of this pursuit.

 No tool is to be ignored or dispensed with.  Colored crystals, micas, metals such as pewter- all lend a different light absorbency or deflection. In creating powdered mattes, graphite  drawings, thick clear sparkles, flat polished white gold, waxes that look like dried gum- I seek out the purest materials alongside strange notions one finds in the vast worlds of craft- swarovski crystals, glitter, shaved pearls, fragmented tiger eyes, cuttlefish sepia, oyster shells, ground coral & fluff.

 A wide variety of pigments allows for true specificity. I am always attempting to collect more colors, textures, mediums and powders-some of which I have used only once. I indulge in any material with feel, veneer, glister or polish- no matter its original source or purpose, only excluding that which is chemically unstable. The feelings of place I paint act as a full expression only when I access the  largest library of elements possible.

It is for this reason that life study, both in and outside of my immediate envrionment,  is vital to my studio practice.  Translating aspects of being- a newly emerged morel, the rustling orchestra of leaves in wind, the scent of running water-allows me to create a two dimensional meme of the human experience.

I am intensely curious about the living experience of others, the intimate details of environments they create and what they do within them - all informed by nature. By observing nature at the source I am able to look at beings, places and objects from uncountable perspectives and perpetually discover something new.

Perspectival representations when successful reveal only a desiccated ghost of what sight might tell us about something that is distant. Removing this artificial boundary, navigating away from the ancient means of space telling, allows me to employ it selectively, and with purpose.

Meddling with the physics of light and sight forces the eye to examine a world from every spot, pushing, pulling, centering the person in world of the object. A two dimensional representation now becomes a perpetual three dimensional object, subject to the whimsy of light and a viewers willingness to explore. 

honors