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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 h uman
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).
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