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My latest paintings began with my own feelings of anxiety about the state of the world. I wanted to explore confusion and interference; the feeling that things aren’t getting through, that we are each individuals in a very complex time and that it is increasingly difficult to distill our own perception of truth from truth as we are directed to understand it. To explore these ideas, I captured a series of photographic images, generally landscapes that chronicle my surroundings, then used drawing and digital technology to manipulate each image, thus creating a record of perception and emotional response without giving the viewer direct access to the stimulus.
I am influenced by the fluid nature of memory, experience and perception. In the paintings I develop from these images, structures vie for dominance within the canvas, much as sensory images or impressions might come to the forefront or recede in the mind or memory. Color and scale serve as a means to magnify and distort the experience of the viewer, ultimately amplifying a common location or a commonplace experience. To this end, technology is used to create the image, but it is the act of painting that makes the image more real, or larger than the reality it was derived from.
The viewer might experience my paintings as having the qualities of liquidity, transience or struggle. In some places, archetypal figures or images, in no obvious way related to the original captured image, seem to emerge from the structures on the canvas. Ultimately, the paintings lead the observer to question whether what he sees is directed by the artist, or directed by the viewer’s own personal set of experiences. In this way, the viewer must consider what we bring to a viewing experience as much as being concerned with what is being viewed and how one is expected to view it.
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