I make what Marcel Duchamp derisively termed “retinal ” art to describe painting. What’s more is that I don’t actually use paint, but employ chalks instead, which kinda makes me a Luddite considering the vast array of visual media there are to choose from in the 21st century. I refer to my work as painting despite the fact that chalk is considered a graphic medium because my approach is concerned primarily with the process of pushing around colour. It’s just that instead of using wet pigments I prefer them to be dry and that this difference informs me in the physical process of laying down pigment in much the same way as the differences between oils and acrylics or either with watercolours but that otherwise it’s all painting.
Which also explains the differences in styles or systems I like to engage in my work, from abstraction to realism with various shades in between. I like to think that whatever else painting is about, and whatever style is being used, it’s ultimately about the act of painting. After that it can also contain whatever else you’re capable of including without losing sight of that simple idea.
I also refer to myself as a painter rather than an artist, doing so because that distinction allows me to engage in the process of making paintings without the added pressure of MAKING ART , or, as I prefer, making intentional art. It’s up to others to decide whether or not what I do is art, and art is what happens when you’re too busy with the work to stop and think about it.
My approach is heavily influenced by my interest in the history of the medium, in both the standard western canon and its formalist perspective as well as the post modern melt down mish mash of the very same canon, and I like to include elements reflecting my own daily life because it refers back to the places and things that are ultimately the place where art both comes from and transcends.
And lately I’ve been thinking that art is basically an aesthetic approach/attempt at providing a concrete example of what scientists refer to as unified field theory , and that it’s kinda like what Raku potters do .
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