Artist’s Statement
My work explores the synesthetic, non-verbal communicative power that the visual arts share with the performing arts, especially music.
Music and dance have clear analogs in the visual arts: rhythm, repetition, improvisation, melody, harmony, and even syncopation. The addition of color, texture, transparency, opacity, and the passing of time physically captured in visual media creates a visual matrix that is both open to what the viewer brings with them and suggestive enough to support a visual dialogue at a pre- and non-discursive level that is simultaneously more fundamental and more expansive than simple verbal communication. The writings of Henri Bergson and others explore the limitations of verbal communication, highlighting a rich vein of human experience to explore beyond those limits.
One final note in light of the coordinated rise of fascist tendencies across the globe over the past several years: abstract art – particularly abstract art that draws upon forward thinking ideas, that aspires to provide an opening to the understanding and appreciation of beauty and a richer life experience, that engages the viewer in a way that allows them to think about and respond to art in new and unique ways – is inherently anti-fascist. History has repeatedly shown us that fascist actors extinguish intellectual endeavors, exile or eliminate those at the forefront of cultural and intellectual movements, and destroy art objects that do not conform to the propagandistic dictates of fascist power centers. As such, creating abstract art becomes an affirmative statement of the values fundamental to full human experience, such as the pursuit of joy, the appreciation of the rich diversity of human culture, and the liberty of individuals to think, move, and act freely.
**A Note on Titles: One of the aspects of non-verbal communication I think about when creating images is its openness. Adding verbal titles to works cuts against this, limiting the conversation between the viewer and the work. However, poetry and literature can pierce the limitations of everyday verbal communication. James Joyce wrestled with the issue of the closed nature of verbal communication in his magnum opus Finnegans Wake, in which each syllable/word/line can have multiple layers of potential meaning depending upon what the reader brings to the text in terms of life experience, education, cultural literacy, etc.
Building on this I developed a rubric to pull random syllables from Finnegans Wake to form titles, with the objective of developing titles that are unique to the work that still remain open to multiple interpretations while having a little fun.