PAINTING AS VISUAL AWARENESS
Because we live within the limitations of a unique existence, we neither see everything at once nor can we see with a purely objective view. Ironically the human condition is a struggle to become more objectively aware of an ever-widening understanding of the world while in the biased life of our limited unique existence. For me this struggle reveals what it means to be human even in the very act of seeing and visually understanding anything whatsoever. I am more interested in the fullness of seeing as an act or event of awareness than I am interested in seeing things as objects to be faithfully recorded. Towards this end I am exploring the expansive qualities of curvilinear perspective in painting as it relates to awareness in the act of seeing.
VISIONARY IMAGES
The emphasis of visionary art is on the affect of vision on the whole of lives. Visionary images are created with the need to see beyond an empirical immediate world in order to see the significance of the world as it relates the rich complexities of our lives. Even when realistically depicting a scene the visionary artists will transform visual effects into affects such as: light as a metaphor for spirituality or as a means to heighten a dramatic moment, color as mood enhancer or as a political association, and atmospheric or linear perspective as a way of showing a precise rational world or even clearly showing a hallucinations.
Painting is always a matter of will. By this I mean that the artist must gather all that he is as he creates. There is no single method, technique, subject, style etc. that will reliably produce a truly worthy work of art. So I struggle each time I paint. And yes just like other artists I am confronted by a host of concerns like choosing: the right colors, delineation skills, composition, materials and the like. And like other artists who have their personal perennially reoccurring issues, I also have a few of my own.
One such concern, which fascinates me, is the problematic incongruities of depicting on a flat and still surface what it is like to live in dynamic three-dimensional world. To this end I am exploring the visionary temporal and spatial quality of curvilinear perspective in painting.