|
Painting and all that is associated with it in my mind equates to personal freedom. While painting, I am able to be completely honest, vulnerable, eccentric and temperamental. In the moment, my patience and my process affect no one other than myself. This concept alone is empowering, and implies that I have some level of control over my own life.
Painting and all that is associated with it in my mind equates to personal freedom. While painting, I am able to be completely honest, vulnerable, eccentric and temperamental. In the moment, my patience and my process affect no one other than myself. This concept alone is empowering, and implies that I have some level of control over my own life.
I love painting - in the physical realm of being part of a creative process that places demands on my body, and in the mental realm of trying to figure out the world though a singular form of notation. While many paintings perk my interest or tantalize my senses into analyzing how they were made or by whom, very few awe inspire me. Those that do, I look at with complete admiration, not only to the surface or the paint application, but also to the individual that was in a moment aligned perfectly to create such a work.
Painting results in telling stories, and I love exchanging stories with others. When I create a work that touches another individual deeply, to a personal experience or memory, I'm both shocked and ecstatic. I'm a very curious being - I paint not only to learn more about myself and expand my understand of the world in which I belong, but also to learn about other people, and how their experiences differ from my own. Difference is key. I believe in growth, not progress. I believe that change is good, but is most often difficult to accept. I also believe that everybody has passion, and that listening to that passion or drive takes some degree of risk.
I don't believe in representation or abstraction. We all have personalized interests, and we adjust our modes of perception accordingly. Personally, I appreciate my individualized version of the world.
I consider myself a painter, rather than an artist who paints. I enjoy other modes of art and art production (and what a brutal way to generalize- is it not more than simply a product in the end?), but I'm partial to painting. I want to draw, do installations, maybe object design and craft, but I have to paint. "An artist who paints" sounds entirely too passive. I rely on my paintings as vitality and as a vessel for exchange. In the end, I like to paint, and I relate mostly with this act.
On Reflections
I'm attracted to shiny objects because of their ability to reinterpret the world. Within these objects, the world is no longer strictly linear and can no longer be easily dropped into a formula to be captured and re-presented. Instead, environments adapt to the form of an object, and not vice versa. I'm interested in the distortion of environments within these objects, and the tangible fluidity of internalizing space. I, like these objects, reflect my environment, but I, like the objects, upon closer inspection, mold the environment to mimic my form. Within shiny objects, representation and abstraction literally collide. I use the objects and reflective surfaces therein to reinterpret my surroundings - to isolate them for investigation and play. Photography is an important part of my process, to isolate an aspect of an experience that I can draw from at a later date. Painting gives me time and energy. In the moment of painting, I am able to slow time down and allow my sentiments and my body to determine my degree of understanding. For me, it is only in this moment that time becomes more of a variable than a dependant. I'm not a shiny object, but I believe that in certain aspects, as in the aforementioned, we work very similarly.
|
