Life revolves around the duality of relationship. Human relationships—intimate, platonic or estranged are an intoxicating subject matter.
Comfortable using mixed mediums, my content is limited only by space to create. My primary choice is to paint on canvas: I like the punishment I can inflict on it and the way the painting can be moved to a clean wall after a battle has been fought. The mixture of the artistic wildness and serenity of the wall is such a visual stimulation to me.
Kandinsky, Klee, Dali, Tanguy and Bellmer are but a few contemporary artists that have all influenced me greatly. Art teachers often pushed for accuracy in shape, depth and form; wanting students to depict exactly what is before them; something I’ve resisted my entire life. Their advice, however, sticks with me when I paint. I strive to obtain some sort of realism in every piece, even with the most abstract work.
When I set up to paint, I limit the color scheme of my palette because initially my process is extremely sporadic. This gives me greater control over the underpainting. The inspiration or story that rides atop the painted surface is influenced, but not inhibited or regulated by this. In short, each painting is defined as two events not one. The “base painting” (as I like to call it) and the experience that rides on it, that eventually pair as one.
The base paint completed, I begin drawing random lines to search for meaning. If I see something in the piece instantly, I literally turn the canvas ninety degrees in order to see the art another way—giving other ideas more opportunity to expand and thrive. I’m not interested in trapping potential with an infant-like first look. I look for lines that seek fluidity and build thoughts. Until that is found there’s a great discomfort with the canvas.
With the lines building, I continue to turn the canvas again and again, until a story finally reveals itself. Once realized, I push the lines past acceptable boundaries of correctness to achieve my objective of explaining the story. By this I mean, if an arm needs to elongate to be a spike more than an arm for the vision to be enhanced, then I will give it that shape.
I relate to each painting in one of three ways: Through a main character in the piece, the secondary character or as an observer of the story. This creates quite a bonding for me to the art.
I often include circles or random mis-colored objects, to represent viewers to the event. My goal is to make a painting abstract enough to broaden a viewers inclusion, yet defined enough to retain what it is representing.
I’ve found that people as individuals are unique, yet relationship struggles unite us all in similar and often predictable ways. I use art to expose and bring to light these struggles. Art has a way of exposing things I seek to hide. When people see my paintings, my hope is for them to see association or at the very least, a varied perspective of their own. |
