ThoughtPainting

This past weekend was the Annual Open Studios at Western Avenue Studios in Lowell, Massachusetts, where I have a studio. This is something I wrote to go on the wall of my studio as an answer the question, "What are your paintings about?" You can see examples of my paintings on my Web site. --------------------- I have always drawn in response to the world in which I live. First it was cars, stick figures and spaceships. In art class it was the requisite still lifes, landscapes, portraits and figure drawings. But drawing from the visual world is a conscious exercise – an exercise that, after a time, ceased to be a sufficient outlet for artistic exploration. Though I still do draw from life, I feel the “real” artistic experience is more intuitive and unconscious. It often begins in meetings during my “day job” as an interactive designer. I doodle -- sometimes to an extreme -- and to the questioning looks of co-workers and clients. More and more I have recognized these doodles not as mere mindless scribbles, but as visual representations of unconscious thoughts. Eventually, I felt the desire to explore these more deeply, intentionally and expansively with paint and canvas. What you see here is the ongoing experiment and experience of making the unconscious visible. They are essentially paintings of thoughts. To define what thoughts are represented would be limiting. It is up to the viewer to draw their own conclusions and experience them in their own way.