Art and Beauty

Art is war. I'm pretty sure any artist could tell you that. The career path of an artist is rarely clearly marked, and often, we must forge our own. It's a balancing act of the day job, responsibilities, commitments, and personal health. I find that I become most stressed when I am unable to determine what the priority is. Everything can seem equally important, but everything cannot always be done. My work at Gallery 6 looks good. It's a creative space, and I enjoyed seeing the display. The show was well selected, with a nice variety and consistency.

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The show was titled Discovering Beauty, and it provoked me to think about the idea of beauty more thoroughly. It has always been an important aspect of my work and I appreciated the opportunity to farther explore the topic. I focused on these ideas in relevance to the work on display:

Explorations of Time and Space

In a single moment, we register images, smells, sounds and words, and link it to our past, present and future. Reality is layered. Beauty exist in the overlap. The world is seen through many eyes, and thousands of realities exist in a single space. My work expresses the layers of reality, and the duality of perception and the truth. It is a journey through these layers, and exploration of what is seen and what is felt. Photographs capture an instant, and layers of photographs read as a film strip, showing how time passes. Painting and distortion reflect on the deception of what we see. I embrace imperfections of my varying processes to emphasize the beauty of what we cannot predict.

All things perceived are temporal, only lasting a moment, vanishing with the light. The spirit endures beyond the dusk of the flesh. Repetition of sunsets reiterates the series of days. Life is made up of moments that cannot always be seen all at once. Our bodies are as a ticking clock, with an ever nearing end, yet the decay of mortality is beautiful. Birds and flight are represented in my work as a means to escape from the traps on routine. Our spirits can fly beyond what we can see. Discovering the freedom is the most beautiful part of life, allowing us to move between the layers.

Clockwork

I've been working on a series right now that has to do with time. One of my friends and I had a conversation several weeks ago now concerning destiny and fate, and I started thinking about the theory of a clockwork universe. This would be a universe where God or a supreme being set everything into motion at the beginning of time and then didn't interfere. Are our lives inevitable? This thought leaves me feeling very empty. I began to explore the idea of time, using repetitive horizons that creates something like a film strip, and echoing shapes. I started with one image, and it began to collect too many elements and I pulled it apart into two. It's still a work in progress, but as they develop, I find myself believing we can escape the inevitable. My bird appears, as a symbol of freedom. We can live in a world where time and routine exist, but not be trapped in it. This is a continuation of my exploration of what reality truly is. Reality is more than what we see, more than the temporal.

A Test Print for Escape

It's hard to get my feet under me. It's like running on a rolling log (something I would certainly avoid doing in real life). I see time passing so quickly and I try to grab the calendar days and look at them as the fly by. I try to grasp that so many days are already gone, so many have been filled and taken away. It makes me run faster, but maybe I'm just spinning my wheels, getting more stuck in these routines and obligations I so earnestly try to prevent.

I was recently showing some of art to people, and this piece was rediscovered. It was actually a test print, which is why the double image is occurring. I put it through the printer one way, and it stopped, so I tried again going the other way. It was my first print on any sort of alternative material. This is galvanized stell flashing that pre-coated with digital ground to absorb ink, and I hadn't wanted to waste my prep time. I always called this image "Escape." I saw the butterflies escaping from this structure. The structure is a photograph I took of the clock tower in Boston's financial district, which I felt was symbolic of societal pressures. One of the people I showed it to, however, saw this tower as a cathedral or church. This interpretation works for me too, as hope and flight coming from a place of spiritual security. I need to ground myself again, and find my peace.