So much of what it means to be alive and to experience life as a human exists beyond what is physical and seen. Much of our experience exists in our emotions, our perceptions, our memories and our sub conscience.
We may see the world with our eyes, but we experience it with our minds and feel it in our hearts. My attempt is to visually capture what is beyond words and beyond physical recognition. A painting of a landscape attempts to capture the world the way we see it with our eyes, I am trying to capture the world of our imagination and emotions; a world that is just as real as what we see with our eyes.
It is not my intention to make beautiful work. If my paintings are beautiful it is because they reflect what I am attempting to capture. And at the most basic level, I feel that to be alive is a beautiful thing. When we close our eyes and stop to feel that we are alive, we feel a sense of joy, almost pleasure in simply being alive. Without stimuli, life is a wonderful, beautiful feeling, and that sensation is very real even though it produces no visual. I suppose if I was attempting to capture the sense of loss, or of longing, my work would have a different aesthetic. But my focus is to find the aesthetics of wonder and raw existence.
My painting is a deliberate and automatic activity. I explore with color theories; I plan and strategize how I approach a piece, but in the act of painting I am on auto pilot. Sometimes, several hours go by and I don’t realize it. Other times, only ten minutes pass and it feels like I painted for a full day. There is a conscious and a subconscious element to how I work. The most important element though is that I paint honestly.