Current Work
At this point in my life making art is not a choice for me. I don’t believe in fate and I am not going to bullshit you about the wonders of painting as a kid. No, the reason why I choose to make art is the summation of many choices that I have in my life. Not all of them I remember. Not of all of them I could have ever understood would lead me to this. I am not trying to escape the responsibility of explaining to you why I think I am an artist. I am merely trying to say that this choice was not made at a spur of the moment. It is the soliloquy of my existence. It derives itself from my profound belief that the only way to live meaningfully, not to be dead before you die, as a drone to the toils of meaninglessness, is to express the sheer humanity of life and all of its wonders.
I suppose I should explain my belief system and how I justify making art. I believe that the natural world, the universe around us, all known phenomenon are so overwhelmingly and profoundly meaningful that they cannot in their parts or as a whole be ascertained by the mind. But rather we, sentient human beings, have lies, illusions, constructions and synthesized worlds. These constructions are the manifestations of the human imagination surrounded by this wondrous universe. This art, by the very implicit nature of art as artificially, acts as our method for understanding this universe by construction our own artificial one. Our art is not for art’s sake but rather for our sake. Art and the experience it evokes is the medium that allows humanity to see, feel, and begin to understand what is around them. Art destroys solipsistic and nihilistic views of the world by allowing human beings to do more than communicate with each other but provoke genuine feelings in one another. These provoked feelings inevitably lead us to recognize that we are not alone and we do not merely exist in our head. Art celebrates that we are alive together. But I suppose most importantly, art provokes the imagination. It stretches it. It bends it. Art allows us to imagine ourselves as another. Not as an escape of from our suffering. But rather allows us to transcend the physicality of our bodies and the etherealness of our mind. But instead of a religious transcendence that bringing us up to the heavens; art pulls us down and shows us sublime wonder of the people and places amongst us. Art simply is our communion with everything else that exists.
My current work to date is informed by this continuous soliloquy but certainly inadequate ate expressing it. I spent the better part of my winter break pondering my choice or lack thereof. I wondered if I could be anyone else or do anything else. But I have come to realize nothing else gives me the same satisfaction as painting. The few paintings I am showing I hope reflect both my desire to paint and also my inadequacies. I suppose I really just took my adviser, Hap Tivey’s, advice and stole from my influences carelessly. I stole these ideas and creative motifs from others because I am still trying to fin my way. I need some sort of guiding force. For example, one my paintings is red, black and white rendition of Boris Yao’s photograph of the assassination of Bobby Kennedy quite explicitly takes from my hero, Gerhard Richter’s blurred black and white photo paintings. Another example is my painting of my refrigerator is an idea taken directly from Antonio Lopez Garcia.
So I suppose at this point I am searching around still to find who I am. For a lack of a better term, I am searching for my own style. I have found what I do. But now I am looking out and I suppose I will always be looking out to see how I do what I do. My hope is that I can merge my sense of the universe in to my painting.
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