Artist Statement
CVI consider my painting to be a form of meditation. For me, painting is a way of drawing close to moments, and an attempt to pay homage to the fleeting beauty of everyday observations. Regardless of the subject, whether a figure or a moment of light in an interior, the sweep of a sky above an industrial neighborhood, the goal is, as Joseph Campbell once put it, ‘to reveal the radiance that lies hidden just beneath the surface of the everyday’. I aim to use a brush to create poetry from mundane materials, and if the paintings resonate with the viewer in the eye, the heart, the gut, then I feel I’ve been successful in sharing some small aspect of my experience.
A deep thematic thread runs through all of my work, it’s a ‘vanitas’ sort of message, to take the time to be present, to notice the magic of noticing, the richness of what’s right in front of us. I think that there is something radical in making work that is intimate in scale and quiet in its content and its aims–it strikes me as a tonic, an antidote, for our times, which are increasingly dehumanized, and in which people are living lives that are increasingly disembodied, mediated by a screen, and constantly stimulated. My art is about connecting with this world, this moment, as it is, as deeply as possible.
