Artist Statement
My decision on medium is as diverse as my skill-set, depending on the needs of the work, but I will shift focus to oil on canvas. Inspired by the interactive potential of optical illusion, this work explores an oily surface to stimulate the gaze, penetrate the optic nerve, and gratify the eye. The eye is coaxed to explore the varying rhythms of chaotic strokes that simultaneously define a figure and fragment it’s ground. The acceleration of marks and gestures arouse a biomorphic form that is not entirely isolated from it’s environment: emblematic of the interconnectedness of an individual and their environment. The physical expression of paint, with the use of cadmium red, embodies humanistic pursuits of wellness, but even more so: bodily encounters.
Wassily Kandinsky poses the question, in his book Concerning the Spiritual in Art:
“Is everything untouchable spiritual?”
My work secularizes the untouchable, by withdrawing the spiritual and aspirational goals to transcend the body. There is tension between the extroversion of color and the introversion of imagery. The entire length of this tension is stroked by the gaze. The work finds solace in the traumatic, the inside, and the hidden. By laying eyes and minds on the bodily expression of paint; the work can resound within a claustrophobic atmosphere. The eye cannot comfortably rest in this extroverted biological space, because the pathways of escape are out of reach. The urgency in the expression of paint guides the eye to lean back and relax the body into this highly anxious Hot Spot.
