Day 129: My Newest Artist Statement

When I told my friend, Weasy, that I had to rewrite my artist statement because my last one was too whimsical, she said, "Yeah, because you're a fucking capitalist now! No more of that hippie bullshit..." Then, there was a long pause while I patiently waited for her to finish taking a bong rip so I could listen the rest of what she had to say. And while I don't know if I'm exactly bourgeoisie yet, I'll agree that the time has come to stop saying things like, "When I paint a tree, I experience the spirit of it, feeling the spiraling upward movement of the trunk as its verdant, luxuriant branches reach for the sun." 


Why didn't someone tell me that I sounded like a loony tune?

Anyway, it was time to spruce it up a little, so here is my newest Artist's statement.

Each painting I create is a simulacra, a copy of an image that has already been disintegrated into its basic components: line, color, texture, form, and value. The images I utilize have already been filtered several times before I begin working with them, at which time I filter them once more before they reach the eyes of the viewer. A car driving down the street is distorted by rain and overcast light. When seen through a wet windshield, the hazy luminescence of taillights on pavement and the unearthly glow from neon signs smear into heavy, protracted streaks of color. Finally, a photo taken of this scene pixellates and further manipulates the image through digital manufacturing. This artificial picture is the one I work from and turn into a final simulacra. Because the subject becomes purely aesthetic, it loses its power as an object and ceases to be a part of reality, transforming into something simultaneously hyperreal and abstracted.

My work is important because it reflects our own experience as humans in a modern world, where everything is filtered several times before we are able to process it. The substance of our society is not truly substantial, but made up of images of things, of ideas of things, and of false things. Reality becomes completely mediated and artifical, a culture of comprehensive and nearly total representation. This simulacra is then something that we use to define ourselves and our surroundings. News broadcasts, images and video on the internet, and radio reports become more real than our immediate personal perceptions. The conciousness of popular culture becomes so inundated with this simulacra that it is often no longer possible to determine what is real and what is false.

The size and scale of my paintings are important. The world is saturated with images both photographic and illustrative. Human eyes have become desensitized to the power of images and art. For this reason, the scale, size, and vibrant color command the viewer’s attention. The immensity is especially important and so I work on large canvasses and wood panels. These surfaces have layers of paint built up on them and then sanded down, creating a distressed history on the surface that allows the bottoms layers to show concurrently with those of the top. It is the tactility of the paint, the vitality of textures that layer on one another that bring the viewer to the ultimate realization that what they are looking at is not in fact a true simulation, but a tangible object, made by human hands and not a machine.