About
I begin my process with automatic drawing, in which I reconstruct living and non-living forms through my own symbolic language derived from mark-making—cross-hatching, continuous line, line gradients, smearing, and schmearing. This approach is distinct from representational art that requires an object to define its form as well as conceptual and political art where content and form express a preexisting idea. Automatic drawing allows me to freely form personages that enable my paintings to mirror reality without artificially curtailing it. In turn, my paintings release viewers from a world constrained by social roles and garments, returning them to spontaneous, organic emotions, compositions, and states of thinking and being.
Using enamel paint has given me the ability to build texture and line quickly enough that I can paint spontaneously without giving concepts or self-conscious deliberation a chance to intrude, but slowly enough that I have time to mold the paint with various tools like scrapers and wire brushes to bring out unique textures on the canvas or paper. Enamel's capacity to cover a vast surface area also relieves the painting from the constraints of the box. Rather than define the space through a canvas of predetermined shape, I first allow the medium to shape its spatial and temporal environment organically in a way that reflects the amorphous figures it gives life to; only then do I extend and reshape the stretcher bars to match. It is important for me to work at large scale since it facilitates building dimensionality into my work while minimizing any hesitation that might interrupt my psychic process.
The painting gains its emotional charge by absorbing the feelings and experiences concentrated within individuals and transforming them into line and hue. Color serves to create a dialogue between the viewer and the figures in the painting that lead both to an experience of dignifying ecstasy. In this sense, the viewer is not separate from the painting. Instead, they recognize in the work the symphonic, elastic reality of their own daily experience.
RF