Painting is a means of communicating & deepening one's personal perceptions & reactions to the world, the small things that strike us as poignant, even if only for a fleeting instant. In a time when we are more and more rushed, there is a wonderful rebellion in the act of observation, in attentiveness, and the slowness and quiet that true attention demands. Looking is a slow process, and so is painting: one mark at a time, observations accumulate, thinking and rethinking, paring it down, building it up, paring it down. I believe in making beautiful paintings, but not easy, sunny images. I like a painting to be hard won, and show evidence of the process of creation, and of revision. And I believe that the emotions it arouses should be as rich, complex, and honest as the process that created it. Painting is a means for closer observation of the world, and of one's self. Representational painting is a language for expressing or recording what's visible, but I feel it is of most interest when focused on something not entirely visible. In other words, I try to paint the exterior world in such a way as to evoke the mysterious richness & vastness of the interior world each of us carries within. My paintings are a record of sensations, emotions, and thoughts, distilled after the fact into layers and layers of paint, color, thought, and most importantly, feeling.
My hope is that some of that feeling is passed on, or generated anew in the viewer. |
