I paint to get close to what is mysterious, that state which exists beyond what seems inevitable, or innate. I want to conjure something of what it is to be living, to be human. The instability of that artistic process mirrors that which exists in reality.
While once obsessed with trying to harness reality, embedding myself in the classical tradition of drawing and painting, I now find myself set in a parallel world, one in which my interpretation of reality relies heavily on mood. I am now interested in what can be felt in the painting, beneath the subject and the layers of paint, beyond the lexicon of critical art observation. I cannot rely on any formula to keep my painting alive and engaged. There is only risk and reward, and an embrace of the inescapable cycle of creation and destruction.
Painting always seems to reveal the recurring power of the uncertain over the certain. Encompassing that uncertainty, the cold divide between painter and subject breaks and in its place, a possibility—with the aid of formal facets of painting— to access the world of the poetic, the sensual, the emotional.
This is the space where intimacy meets the unknown. Where one’s subjective understanding may feed into a collective experience. The objective, through painting, is to engender a feeling, a memory or inspire contemplation, to connect to the viewer, but not to tell the viewer what to think.