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I am a floating head. I am a fly on the wall. I am completely yet unwillingly attached to this earth, permanently stuck in a tragically uncertain reality. I am a time traveller. I am a walking mirror. I am a helpless sponge. It's haaaaaard being me. I love being me. I am here, in this room. I am hovering in this 'space. I am weary of you all. I trust everyone. Hugs and kisses, you're all beautiful. I witness perpetual ugliness and destruction, eyes open wide. I run myself through unnecessary gaunlets, time and time again, then pamper myself beyond necessity. I am an evenly distributed mess of contradiction. Scrambled. Carefully planned. I notice all the details. I am blind to what is right before me. I'll check you out, let you in, smile, fidget, uuuuuh, let me tell you a story about when I was a kid and ... then I grew up. I really wish that last part could have been avoided.
ARTIST'S STATEMENT:
Our eyes are open wide and our brains are intricately wired to pick up and assimilate all that comes into sight. We subconsciously collect images in our mind's infinite memory banks and each of these are accompanied by other points of reference, which mostly boil down to emotions born of our personal trajectory through life. (This is the very phenomenon that advertisers and propagandists across the globe play upon.)
As an artist, I get to play around with all of the infinite visual elements I can muster and juxtapose them to give the viewer (and myself) particular reference points that will trigger something deep in our visual memory banks and bring forth a particular group of emotions.
It excites me just as much when people don't get the same feelings from the "scenes" I paint as when they do catch on to my general intent. The beauty of creating an arrangement of colors, shapes and symbols, is that every person who sees it will think and feel differently about it.
Much of what I paint I am unable to fully describe in words. When I try to speak of my choices in color, shape and symbol, the words feel clunky and gooey inside my mouth. At times when folks ask me to tell them what my art is about, I wish I could pull out a tiny, pocket-sized projector, point it at a wall and say "THAT." Come on, Apple, get on it. I give them two more iPhone generations before they build in the projection feature.
All that being said, I expect that this will be a lifelong curiosity that will keep me entertained with life as well as keep me artistically inspired... or at least I hope it will. As long as I keep reminding myself how cool I think it is that by using various landscapes, color combinations and anthropomorphic figures, I can create allure and intrigue. Something exciting and interesting will result from almost any combination of those elements, and it will touch upon some minuscule part of mankind's myriad of emotions.
[IN A NUTSHELL:] Somewhere amidst that narcissistic tendency of our highly evolved species, we are given the under-appreciated power to imagine.
"The Hawk" 11"x14" the sequel to "The Flock."
This is a collage I did in December 0'06. I like landscapes. I made my own collage matierials by stamping and cutting up strips of magazine paper, and used oil pastels and colored pencils. It was a lot of fun. I think I gave this one to my cousin for X-mas. There are a couple more like this in my picture album.
"Inside" oil on canvas. 4'x4' 2003
"Oh No! The Bees!" 4'x5' (sold)
wine-glass monster. heavy on the mixed media, on an old cupboard door. yeah, staples and nails and glue and shit. love it. 2006
"Curtains." a self-portrait. oil on canvas, 46"x36" 2006
"Face Face" I miss you. (sold) wood panel, 30"x42" 2001.
forks for eyes, drain for a mouth
. on wood, 17"x18" 2005"Getting lost..." Part I of III Part series. yeah, aren't they all self-portraits?... wood panel, oil paint, 48"x32" 2003