This week, the theme of artist statement writing came up again in the Studio Coffee discussion. I thought I'd give it another try with this new work. I typically write one with every new set of paintings - then another one every 2-3 years from more of a macro point of view. These last paintings (finished Dec 2016) have really beat me up.
I have worked on these since the summer of 2014, and 3 of the 9 painting series never resolved. Each day, I reacted to what I painted the day before - building up layers over time, creating a dialog between now, and then. The work seemed most to me like a musical improvisation - one tone, rhythm, pattern, or contrast, reacting to the others. I don't think I really ever gave myself permission to paint in this way - to really paint as I would create music - I have been a musician for a long time. Part of the joy that I find in making music is in the connections that someone makes with another musician - while playing together. That dialog evolves and defines the musical passage or piece.
Since the completion (Dec 2016) of my most recent series, I see how my paintings recall for me the endless stream of images that I see on my phone, the television, media - I must see hundreds or even thousands of images in a day, a week? It occurs to me that what I am really becoming aware of is time passing. Like in a film, a sequence of images flickers past my eyes. Billboards (I was a billboard painter), ads, television, smartphone, social media, video games, selfie photos, endless list of posts, likes, and reactions inundate my perception - streaming in and stringing back, falling away from the ever changing present.
Painting in layers stops that for me - each layer a gathered fragment - each painting a collection of inter-connected moments. I recently saw some work where an artist (Jason Shulman) combined all the scenes of a film into one image - an atmospheric, time-lapse-like, single image that represented the film in a way that time was really visible in the forefront. I think that I too am developing an awareness of this compressed-time through these paintings. I wonder if all the streams of data that we are leaving behind - the pictures, posts, likes, reactions - the data of our lives, is going to be lost? I think that my work becomes a sort of visual archaeology - I find myself looking for, remembering, and reacting to these visual fragments. This dialog happens in the paintings, and I often realize that I am seeing a cloud of moments, places, glimpses, and memories.
