Artist Statement
We all live in a three dimensional world of depth. As we look around, we can tell that some objects seem close where others appear further away. Space is the illusion of distance on a two dimensional surface such as a canvas, board or a sheet of paper. My paintings are predicated on a distinction between illustrated space and abstract, pictorial space. The former is mimetic and referential; the latter transformative, and thoroughly embodied by pictorial dynamics. The nature of the constriction I’m striving to overcome is innate to the medium, and is emphasized the more formalistic and the less representational the idiom. In all the ways that it alludes to a world beyond its materiality, painting is indirectly fictive, rather than directly causal like photography. It is always a form of interpretation rather than evidence, except as it constitutes a causal trace of gesture and touch. Formalistic abstraction, which does not strive to reach out, even in this indirect sense, to a represented subject – and, by doing so, to claim the space it might inhabit – is the most self-referential of painterly forms.
