Artist Statement

The other reason artist's statements are so lacking, mine included, is because it takes time and work and a certain amount of navel gazing, in the good sense, to come up with those elusive paragraphs that are your bridge to the wider public.

The important thing to remember, is that is exactly what your statement is - your bridge. Your calling card. Your letter of introduction, hand written by you for them, to let them know that you exist and this is what you do.

Of course, you'll always come up against the usual array of obstacles when writing your statement, not least the doubts. Those thoughts that portray your work as mediocre. Granted your work may be very mediocre, and you'll soon find out. But you won't find out, and start the steps to improvement unless you write that statement and start getting that "mediocre" work out there. So get writing.

Here's my work in progress, its not perfect, in fact its just a loose conglomeration of ideas, but there might be something here that helps you get working on yours.

As an artist, I see my role as one of to delight the viewer. It’s primarily to instill a positive life giving emotion. This is mainly achieved through a concentration on color and texture, with subject being secondary.

I regard color as the vehicle that carries my creative impulse. Depending on what I’m attempting to express, the color scheme can vary from the harmonious to the discordant. I love to look at a subject in an unusual and unorthodox way by painting it in unfamiliar colors.

My work celebrates beauty in unusual places. I’m not interested in a conventional beauty but rather the overlooked and understated. A clown performing is obviously beautiful and funny; a clown arguing or reading a newspaper is what I find intriguing. Its what I find beautiful.

My goal with my art is to create works that make me smile, that enable one to stop and reflect, perhaps even to ponder for a moment, what the painting is about.

My work has no grand designs or goals.

My inspiration to paint is to express. To express in a tangible real way how I have felt about a thing, a place, a person, a time. Painting for me is the forming of a relationship.

As such painting for me is a compulsion to express. There is very little in my work that is premeditated or formulaic in approach. I paint because I have to.

Painting for me is visceral physical experience. Paint allows me to experience the physicality of creating, and by its very nature, its responsive, colorful, easily changeable. Challenging.

The narrative is always of interest to me. I’m trying to tell a story.

I work, in the initial stages, loosely and fast, allowing intuition to be my guide. <