In daily life we prioritize. We manage time, save time, avoid wasting time. We buy health insurance, fire insurance, car insurance, travel insurance, liability insurance, flood insurance. Then, a disaster like COVID-19 sweeps us out of our routine, and we are reminded of our precarious position in a broader ecosystem. This vulnerability interests me, with the comingling of abstraction and representation as the metaphor for uncertainty.
I love painting for all the reasons that distinguish it from film, photography, and digital imaging: the handmade quality that condenses the consciousness of the time required to execute the work. Mark making and developing color relationships require space in time, and space to think; art becomes both meditative and responsive. The image then merges with the actual time of the viewer. This may last only a second, or many minutes, particularly if one lives with an artwork. I strive to make art which draws the viewer to look again, and again. I want the experience of looking to expand into the viewer’s thinking, stretching the contemplative experience.
I agree with Jorge Luis Borges’ comments that ‘You (the poet, or ‘every artist’) are constantly receiving something from the outer world. It all has to be transformed…[this is] the happy duty, or transforming everything into symbols. Those symbols can be colors, shapes, sounds.’ (from 1976 television interview)
In the past I have painted on shaped canvases, jostled abstraction with cartoon-like figures, built painted sculptures and sometimes installations. My favorite artist is (usually) Elizabeth Murray. My career has been multi-faceted, from corporate murals to islamic design. The more time I spend in my current day job (picture framing), the more I am pulled to my personal abstraction, where I feel most free and alive. I thrive on the uncertainty of the outcome and the sense of experimentation.