TEXT

STATEMENT

My art is a visual discovery process regarding imagination and meaning formation. It is a constructive activity, reflective of internal experience. It is also an expressive embrace of the fundamental absurdity of reality and meaning itself. My practice integrates internal experience with external inputs, forming a creative dimension that has its own consuming spatial logic. This space is speckled with, or revolving around, entity-like figures that reflect myself, others, emotional states or cultural/media stimulation. Often the figures have multiple others contained within them, and they are emerging from the plane while also existing as the foundation of the world. This world is psychic and reflects mental nature, with the pieces being a web of subconscious associative activity. 

Associative processes are integral to language and media culture. Language is inherently associative. It functions as a relational meaning-web where every idea only functions in relation to other ideas. Meaning is immersive in this manner, and I find it fascinating how this mechanism operates. If you are overly-analytical, it becomes dizzying, if not completely absurd. The art represents this feeling visually.

The pieces can contain text, and inner dialogue guides the workflow and theme. It is guided intuitively and I employ free-association and surrealist automatism to create the web. More conscious forms are then brought out through viewing and responding. This process is based in drawing, as that is the medium I find easiest to work free-associatively.

I have digital and physical bodies of work which function differently. Working digitally has a direct relationship to technology in that it constructs a digital space. It is arguable that “the digital” is already its own psychic reality. When physical, it is a mixture of drawing, painting and collage and tends to be more raw and expressive. Though lacking digi-sharpness, its material existence is attractive spatially and strengthens the concept of externalization.

Beyond the literal use of collage in the physical pieces, the notion is important in both bodies. They are collages of visual information containing repetitive mark-making, patterns, figures, symbols and text. The mark-making can mirror natural textures such as leaves, grass and hair and there are frequently animal entities within the pieces. This fusion of natural forms with technology is intriguing aesthetically, and it is possible to view industry and artistic/cultural productivity as an (often destructive) extension of natures biomechanic churning.

To be more direct about my areas of interest, they include:

Non-physical/material reality; digital environments; architecture/natural space; the collective entanglement of technology and human experience; industrial society/natural processes; natural lushness; lifeforce and cycles; animal mind; instinct; capital as a self-propelling agent; aliens, conspiratorial paranoia; the infinite complexity of the universe; thingness/voidness; religion and mythology; intelligence; media symbols; pop-culture; plastic/organic; futurism/old-time nostalgia; psychedelia; surrealism; horror vacui; insanity; language and association; internal dialogue; dreamtime; admiration for the constructive will of humanity…

Whether or not these always directly come out, they are represented by my art in spirit. There is a paradoxical component to many, and I believe the interconnectivity of opposites is the foundational principal of reality. Beyond that, or any cerebral/art-historical conceptions, it’s meant to be consumed experientially. It reminds the viewer of the absurd possibilities of life and human imagination. Though it may contain a component of intensity, I want it to be… fun, in its own deranged sort-of-way.

HAND

Human hand through mind
and gland extension,
Extends when met vet
visual shimmer rep
through wet mind
over land like dew,
With due intention…
attention askew

Hey! Right…
I have hands too,
Damn right, right hand
make thing then plan,
Out calling DAMN!
Can this man
see right through?
What make consume/view,
It’s recycling
relationally in tune

In-cycling,
text-er rex
make digi-plastic
mind complex,
Intense 
where world going…
Where world?
Where world wear pearl
inter-hendrix merit swirled 
and lept
in door back to self,
Into…
Falling up/through,
Gravity step 

It’s on television: old,
It’s on new-lie 
screen time warp,
Weave gold 
cultural astral-blasted 
door, unhinged,
What is bounce freedom?
What is mount norm?
Run thing run form,
Make raster-blast fast,
Attach my thumbs,
My thumbs attach 
in dance and
make catch-22
on bandit-swirl
then dare wear world,
In lieu of time-break
two questions ensue:

What is there to make?
What is there to do?