Wednesday, April 26, 2006

White River Junction 2006

When I returned, ten years ago, having already been to California and back, I don’t know exactly what I expected. I left the West Coast nearly ten-years after my Art School days had ended at the San Francisco Art Institute. I was thinking Australia; definitely, somewhere off the continental United States. On that long transit ride east, White River Junction, no more appealing than a-thousand tiny-other little grease spots on the map, like it or not, was in the cards for me. It now seems fittingly apropos that this culturally and economically challenged and cross-mixed outcast boarder-line railroad town happened to be the return destination printed on my bus ticket home. It is nothing other than circumstance, opportunity or chance, as far as I can see, that leads you and I to being here, right here and now. It’s the discovery of a new set of principles that you or no one else around you could see the possibilities in before. It’s become a drive for innovation, creativity, finding pathways that lead towards more sustainable futures. It is being on the wrong side-of-the-tracks until you can see the relativity between the concepts of absolute. It’s about those few and then a few more, who make it worthwhile - to stick around – and get it all done. White River Junction – It’s not so bad! Even the motto of the town’s Rio Blanco social club isn’t so hard adapting to. One can do it seemingly overnight. I’ll be glad to tell the rest of that story too, if you or anyone else who asks cares to listen. And do I still dream of Australia? You bet. Mate.

Friday, April 14, 2006

Can one make visible what is invisible? Or is it even necessary to try? Or is it that, what is visible, most likely, goes unseen?

As an Artist, I look for what I cannot always see.
I am interested in any available insight seen through an internal yet interpersonal individuality.
I seek to understand this influence of intuition; how precepts of integrity, value, and meaning are, in turn, influenced, by emerging experiences in a new and changing bio-political and techno-ecological environment.

As a Painter, I want to challenge my perception.
What can be observed can also be manipulated.
Just as the un-known, sometimes, will become known, what already has been seen, is often forgotten.
This uncertainty is timeless and resolute.
The most puerile action of the painter is an act of seeing and remembering.
My process, as a painter, is deeply dependent on an ability to sublimate the expanding or contracting of uncertainty.

As an American, I hope to refine my critical awareness.
Our Nation State has been set on edge by a war of politics and economics.
The lure of disaster, real or imagined, continually reinforces threats of cultural uncertainty.
Our lives are devalued, night after night, and day after day, through a carefully marketed and managed allegiance to image, product or entertainment, distracting us from seeing what we could see, if we truly wanted to.