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I'm often told that my work "looks just like a photograph" though I confess that this has never been one of the reasons why I paint. Despite the conclusions that the viewer may draw about my work, "photorealism" has always seemed a bit of a cynical exercise to me. I find the concept more intriguing (and amusing) than the actual expression of it. My own work is the product of direct observation, photo-reference, memory and imagination, and not necessarily in that order. Images are assembled, eliminated, shifted or changed in scale for the sake of unity and clarity or sheer fun. If the viewer is feeling cheated out of a purely photorealistic experience, he/she can take comfort in the initial confusion between the "reality" of the painting and their own experience. "Reality" (as Nabokov observed) is a word only truly having meaning in quotation marks. My overwhelming preoccupation in my paintings has been with direct sunlight, and perhaps this is merely an unconscious response to the elusiveness of "reality" an attempt to literally "shed light on something". Whether for the wonderful abstractions it creates with the realistic framework, or its ability to heighten contrast or its sheer ephemeral nature, strong light is the leitmotif of my work. Perhaps this may also be a direct, visceral response to the paucity of sunlight in the pale, northern climate in which I've lived my entire life. Language and how it colors our perception of "reality" also fascinates me. Thus I may choose to depict objects strictly for their punning quality (pear/pain, plum/plumb, etc.) To illustrate how language can obscure as well as illuminate. But my primary motivation for painting is that I'm enchanted with the stunning and marvelous qualities of the ordinary. I return again and again to lavish care on a canvas and slowly build up, layer by layer what I hope to be a precise transcription of the mundane. To lose oneself in a plum, to navigate the reflected surface of a discarded brick, one finds that the ordinary can be truly extraordinary. I ask the viewer to pause with me, to drink in what we normally overlook in our daily lives. My paintings are merely studies made with express intention of evoking in the viewer a sense of the endless possibilities of their own perception. |
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