Alan Gordon Fine Arts & Illustration
 

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"I am a thief and I am not ashamed.  I steal from the best...I think I know the value of what I steal

and I treasure it for all time- not as a possession but as a heritage and a legacy."  - Martha Graham

Artist Statement  (originally written in 2000, but reworked in the Spring of 2011 for an exhibition)

     I approach each subject as an individual path to a work of art.  Each subject carries its own emotions, concepts, and definitions.  I react to those elements, and that in turn affects my style.  My purpose is to convey the human experience, and in particular- the inspiration of challenges through adversity. It's about being connected to the world, and attempting to make some sense of it through the visual arts. Much of what I do is avidly recording experiences and thoughts. They say that art is aesthetics, the study of beauty...to me this is beauty. 

     Art is a huge part of who I am, but I am also very diligent at not limiting myself.  Many artists hone in on their one area of expertise, I have never been able to do that.  To put it simply, I am all over the place.  Sometimes I like to say that I have art ADHD.  I enjoy the hands on elements of drawing and painting, sculpture, and digital work- but I am also a very big fan of the mental gymnastics of performance art, writing, and philosophy.  Art can be an exploration of experience, and with that comes an inherent risk of failure.  Failure is not a terrible word or event.  Failure is a possibility when the attempt is to take a viewer somewhere new within the realm of how that viewer thinks.  And that is the core of creative thinking- going someplace new.  Merce Cunningham (Dancer & Choreographer) had a quote: "The artist has to ask themselves, what is the point of doing what you already know?"  But our current mentality might be losing the opportunity to explore ideas due to how much pressure we are putting on ourselves to succeed.  It is that pressure that seems to create goals that don't align or ever meet our true needs as people instead of cogs to a machine heading nowhere in particular. That is what fear does; it keeps you frozen in place. I am not an art purist, but it is something that I feel to be a lost concept in art.  Any approach to creation that becomes a good for everything formula, lessens the impact.  Style happens when you don’t plan it, and when you do- it’s stale.

     I believe in the saying that it is not what you do when everything is going right;  it's what you do when things are going wrong.  The challenge of overcoming adversity is what fuels my fire.  It's fighting the fight to make the world the way that I want it to be- to make this time we have in life worthwhile. The only control I have is to give up trying to control things.  Art is more than a career, more than money, more than notoriety, or materials, more than products or a process.  As I have stated many times in other writing, art elevates the human soul beyond the chains that seem to burden our societies.  It is an expression of who we are at any given point in time- in our soul.  It is an expression of the internal.  Be that calm or turmoil, strong or weak- it is our value as human beings.  And without that internal human component, we are left with a vast emptiness.   Art is that important. 

     A few years back I stumbled upon a quote by Christopher Reeve, who went from Superman to paraplegic: "Misfortune can force you into doing things you should be doing anyway.  Lessons come from adversity.  Anything can happen to anyone.  You can find a new lease on life- more meaning that you thought possible in simple things...Let go.  Live in the moment.  Go forward." 

     For more of my writing on Art, please visit my art journals (here).  For images of student work from my classes at Rochester Institute of Technology, Nazareth College, Genesee Community College, and Monroe Community College- please visit my student page (here).