“To write is perhaps … to select the whispering voices, to gather the tribes and secret idioms from which I extract something I call myself.” (Jarrett, 2007, p. 79)
To paint is perhaps … to select the whispering colors, to gather the silhouettes of thoughts and secret idioms from which I extract something I call myself.
Following the path of appropriated and partially modified quote from Deleuze and Guattari I am researching to … extract something I call myself. Influenced by my present studies at Concordia University I am tempted to exteriorize in visual form the creative process of my studying and researching for my own character of creative expression. Through the metaphoric visual language of color and line I explore and apprehend the process of my learning. To contextualize the flow of my thoughts and my imaginary visions I am inspired by the panoramic views of the city from the windows of Concordia University SGW building. When walking through the corridors and different floors one can feel the air filled with a mass of creative thoughts bouncing against each other and looking for an outlet to materialize their weightless bodies of unspecified shapes visible only to the artistic sensibility. All this amalgam of emotions influences the explorative energies of my perception of surrounding me cognitive reality of the university space. Gazing through the university windows I absorb the open space of structures, lines, and colors as creative nourishment for my artistic quest. The only thing separating me from this abyss of colorful energies is the materiality of the glass and the window framing. The parapet marks the border of my reach as it did in the Renaissance sacred paintings where the divine was separated from the mortal. However, in my case I am switching the sides and placing the divine in the university interior space as a cohesive representation of its intellectual force, which is guiding my creative impulses.
Taking in consideration the fact that the artist statement is a common practice considered by many as essential to any aspiring artist in his or hers artistic quest for recognition on the institutionalized artistic market. Furthermore, in general conception the artist statement proofs the artist’s cognitive maturity. However, this practice exists as a controversial act to some artists and I am one of them. Not everything needs to be explained. Making art is a creative process, which sometimes the artist himself cannot explain and pretending that we always know what we do might seem as a little exaggeration. I asked myself many times a question: why do I have to explain what I paint? The only reasonable answer I have to it is that some viewers feel more comfortable to know what the artist want to express through his artwork, especially when it is an “abstract” representation. In general what happens during the artist’s creative process is difficult to explain and I am sure that many of us just follow the mysterious energies of electrons floating in the labyrinth of our brain attracting each other or pushing off in the process of electric discharge, which moves the hand with the brush or any other medium leaving on the surface scars of this electro-volcanic process. The truth is that artist statement facilitates the intellectual reception of the creative visual content. However, the figurative painting is mostly self-explanatory creation and over intellectualization of its content is to me unnecessary activity.
In my recent series of paintings I want to show how in my perception the artist statement interacts with the kind of art I do. Does it help to understand better what I paint or it acts rather like a distracting element. To me, the artist statement is like voile. Personally, I agree with Archibald MacLeish’s phrase “should not mean but be” and so I prefer to look at the face without the voile so I can read its psychological cartography, but it is my way to see the issue at this time.
