Emergent Structure (22)
Created on: Sunday, June 16, 2019
Artist's Statement
My paintings are highly process-oriented, although that may not be obvious at first. My process is an attempt to deeply understand my own consciousness, to visit it, remember it, and bring back a postcard that I can show others.
The process by which my paintings are conceived mirrors the process of human imagination and cognition. I begin a design by meditating, and I am presented with my consciousness, no filter. This is the same process that creates our dreams, but it also creates our waking thoughts. It controls the narrative voice in our heads, directs our memory and planning, and tells us what to think about ourselves.
I spend a lot of time in nature, a lot of time analyzing intricate fractal patterns, and a lot of time thinking about space. When I meditate, these things interact, presenting me with a space, shapes, movement, colors. This would be enough to make a visually striking abstract painting on its own, but with nothing of substance to connect with. Allowing my meditative practice to present me with more details, I pour my imagination out onto the work, filling the space with objects that mean something to my subconscious. I do have a meaningful intention with each work; the imagery I use is not random, each object is chosen for reasons not secret to me, but not necessary to share overtly with the viewer.
I want the viewer to experience a unique space, warped and bent to show more information, a sublime energy, like a delicate apparatus is about to bust open from joy, and the kind of thoughts I was having when I painted the work. The same way my thoughts generated the work, the work will generate thoughts in the viewer. They are not likely to be the same thoughts, as the work is loaded with realistic imagery that has personal meaning, the way the same dream might mean different things to different people. The painting is a record of my subconscious thoughts, ready to be played back by the viewer's subconscious and interpre
