Artist Statement 2008

I want to make a painting come alive by working abstractly as well as from life. I’m not interested in mere representation. I see my urban landscapes as dramas: the objects, the colour and the spaces between objects providing the dialogue.

I paint the modern world—the world around me. But I don’t simply hold a mirror up to it. My paintings are models; they express what I cannot put into words—the healthful, restorative rhythms and forces I see in nature. Albert Camus, in his famous essay, declares artistic creation to represent rebellion on several levels—chiefly a rebellion or rejection of the world’s disorder and an attempt to forge a new reality containing the order and style it lacks. On a metaphysical level, rebellion represents a demand for unity, the impossibility of gaining it, and the construction of an alternate universe. One could easily add to the chaos and disorder of the world by depicting it. Today this is more fashionable than being optimistic, which is seen as being naïve. But I don’t want to create negative art. I want my painting to be harmonious, lyrical and vibrant. I impose order on a world that has these qualities only in fleeting moments.

The predominance of language in our society has lead many in the contemporary art world to believe that art shares a similarly linguistic function, and that the role of the artist is to discuss ideas and comment on society or challenge accepted notions. The result is that form has been subjugated to content, and the visual sophistication and richness of the past has been rendered inconsequential. But visual art has its own agenda. It communicates, but it doesn't successfully articulate concepts the way language does. The art symbol expresses that which cannot be put into words, namely the intangible, inexplicable “inner life” of subjective experience. It expresses what it is to feel, to be human.

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