Fantasia

FANTASIA@CKG, Christine Klassen Gallery, October 11 – November 24 2018, OPENING: Thursday, October 11, 5-8pm

Artist Talk, Saturday, October 13, 2pm

 

What are these works about?

About paint, about seeing, about the meditative processes those entail.  

 

I’m not standing up for realism particularly, but for the moment. 

To be still – with the object and the space it inhabits – 

and deepen the moment.  

Becoming slow enough, still enough, quiet enough.

 

Considering, engaging, insisting on a quality of attention, deep focus.

Patience. Repetition. Practice. 

A sustained note, a mantra.

I am trying to slow time.

 

There’s the play between  reality and abstraction,

or about how what we perceive,

or think we perceive structures our reality and our experience.

 

Light. Time. Attention.

How the quality of attention determines the experience.

 

From my inside, out.

 

The objects, the everyday, the common. 

As vehicles for thought, emotion, contemplation. Maybe the object has meaning, but how? 

Perception. How, why, what, sometimes who or where. 

Using realism, the objects, grouping, stacking, juxtaposing, reflecting, pushing light and colour, creating abstraction. 

Maybe surprise and delight, maybe the unexpected. 

Using all the above to create meaning, meaning in layers or tangents. All working together.

A fantasy. Multidimensionality.

And then there’s Beauty. Like the poet John O’Donohue, and many other poets, 

I believe that Beauty is a human birthright and that it acts as a balancing force for chaos. 

I see Beauty as our common and necessary antidote to the difficulties of everyday life.

And I believe that we ignore or diminish beauty at our peril because Beauty is basic sustenance for human beings.

I feel very honoured to be given the opportunity to present these works, in a space that allows them to breathe and to fully come into their own. I’m deeply appreciating seeing how profoundly they affect the feeling of space.

I cannot thank Christine Klassen Gallery, Christine and Hilary enough for giving me their ongoing support. 

Thank you.

For a more in depth understanding of where I’m coming from check out – John O’Donohue,The Invisible Embrace, BEAUTY, Rediscovering the true sources of compassion, serenity and hope. I can only read a couple of paragraphs of this book at a time, the writing affects me so deeply. He is saying what I have felt about Beauty my whole life. But he was a poet, so he found the words for what I’ve been trying to make clear in my painting.

Thanks to Chris Kuzmanovitch too, whose abstract paintings are the perfect foil for my realism. A pleasure to meet you and exhibit beside you Chris.