Precious Amongst Pebbles
How paint moves, behaves, and feels is the beginning and end of every work, the most important element. All other things that may emerge, like a resemblance to something else, have to come from the paint, not the other way around. I cannot set out to make a stone; it has to come out of the work, from a moment where I recognize something happening and I sense that if I push the paint in a certain way, and add some shadow, then something like a stone will emerge.
I shape the process, pushing and pulling the paint to keep it in a transformative state, between material and potential; a choreography between passages of paint that are thin and thick, glossy and matte, chunky and smooth, saturated and dull.
The paintings are manifestations of myself, my character, how I deal with the world. More specifically, how I want to deal with the world. My actions in the studio are rehearsals for a way of being. Within the relatively safe space of the studio and the four corners of the canvas, I am able to practice the habits and virtues that I think are ideal and necessary in my own life: the patience to let things unfold in their own time; the sensitivity to notice when something is slightly off; the attentiveness to sit with something uncomfortable and only act once I have located the issue, but to act decisively and without fear to risk something good for the sake of something that could be great. I can practice accepting things and practicing letting them go, understand the reciprocal value of beauty and ugliness, train my eye to notice things and train my body to sit still.
At the core of each one, then, is a manifestation in physical form of the person that I was and the choices that I made at that time. Whether I was patient or eager, attentive or careless. Whether a friend knocked on my door midway through a paint pour, or the sun was shining through my window and cast a shadow that I decided to trace with a brush. Whether my mind recognized something in the paint that reminded me of certain places I had been or artists I had studied. In every moment, a piece of myself is recorded in the work.
