"Painting has nothing to do with thinking, because in painting thinking is painting" - Gerhard Richter
Artistic Statement
My art follows the examples of many artists before me in undermining the concept of the artist's obligation to maintain a single cohesive style. My concern is never the art itself but what it is used for.
I don't want a perfect picture, that doesn't change, that is absolute, like a photograph, the perfect image. I usually blur things to make all the parts of the painting a closer fit. Perhaps I also blur out the excess of unimportant shapes, to make it smooth and perfect. Many of my paintings are made in a multi-step process of representation. Taking my chosen colour palette, and with large brush strokes of acrylic paint washes, I create a sense of importance and equality. My abstract work and its illusion of space is developed out of an accumulation of spontaneous reactive gestures of adding, moving & subtracting paint.
The painting's many layers, strokes, scrapes of colour may thus appear as beautiful as anything found in nature.
I do think that due to my architectural background, trying to extract meaning from an abstract work of art often proves utterly futile. I always relish the visual experience, simple pleasure, and appreciation of abstract forms for their own sake.
I want my abstract paintings to act like "windows" through which the viewer can see inside and outside the image, taking them to another place & time.