artist statement
I hope those who view my work, are engaged by it and even like it.
A. Synopsis:
I believe in the work I consider complete. There have been many that failed that test in time and I have reworked or destroyed them. I ask that you just look at the work openly. Give it a bit of time, consider it for long enough that it may interact with what you bring to it.
I believe most artists are digging around for some kinds of truth, some semblance of meaning - a deep desire to express or reveal some small, commonly held idea(s) or sensibilities that merit further reflection or closer introspection – and for visual artists, like myself, painting or drawing, in their silence and stillness, provide the best way to make these statements. I am not drawn to the many words that would be required and my work remains in its entirety, available for contemplation, unlike the ephemeral character of music or other 4D forms. This is its strength and its weakness, because the ephemeral has a unique power and fragility that I cannot engage. These issues encapsulate a very large part of my compulsion to put together marks, colors, images, forms…
I have engaged painting and drawing, figures and non-objective work for years at a time. Each has its own nature and brings different aspects of my thoughts and expression into play. Issues related to the human condition and human behavior in particular, as underscored by the nature of consciousness and perception are consistently on my mind.
Making the work is joyous effort, and likely shows through, as does my general optimism, even when dealing with less pleasant issues. Subject matter varies widely, and style, like color is interesting, but secondary, in that it is only pertinent to the individual piece or idea. I can say that I generally tend to more expressionistic, more raw, less refined forms, edges, transitions, …because such work invites a little less homage to skill, technique or perfection and sets a tone that is appropriately less resolved, stable and aggrandized. This kind of visual seems better aligned with our best, most hopeful, profoundly limited selves, our fragmented consciousness, distorted memories and perceptions, our error-filled, fragile existence. One that is exposed to countless ‘unpredictables’, ‘ineffables’, absurdities, changes, perceived positives and negatives enormous highs and lows, and much worse. And all the while most of us retain optimism and a persistent curiosity. This gives a closer glimpse into some of my preoccupations and motives for visual expression.
A few words on the actual process, one that engages the body and the senses completely. It is a highly focused, intensely condensed patch of time. Prior to this, there are often periods of thinking, reading and even notes when not making the work. Once the activity of drawing or painting starts, it is a form of disciplined play. Most of that activity outside the studio is buried, irrelevant, or it might, in ways that are certainly not definable or conscious, contribute to the activity of making the piece. Choices are made, techniques employed, and the “zone,” that artists in all disciplines know, the place that authentic creativity takes place, is required. It is a place of concentration, where seeing, responding and acting are in harmony. It is a context of sustained, confident, spontaneous sets of almost intuitive moves. This is something that comes with experience. Over-planning, over-thinking, once the work has begun, only stultifies the process. Self-consciousness crushes freshness, inventiveness, risk, flow… Taking risks, building a form and responding to it, moving forward until the work has a life, is the basis of engendering vitality in the piece. That is the play. I suppose it comes from years of stumbling, failures, technique (including the defiance of that technique), and feeling comfortable with one’s materials. It allows for and calls for new solutions, new choices and moving at one’s authentic pace, (one that varies with the situation at hand, as do all these things). This is why returning to a work in progress requires some amount of staring time. It is this activity that allows a legitimate reentry point into the activity of continuing to engage the piece. A point is reached when there is a combination of forms and interactions that seem complete. This point is hard to put into words. It is often achieved at a moment when the piece is not too refined, not overly finished, but sufficiently rich with information and interactions. Once little refinements are engaged, already a less spontaneous, more self conscious act, the piece is being decorated, cosmetics are at play and the essence of the work is being diminished. It is then a time for some destruction and fresh engagement.
B. The Somewhat Longer, More Detailed Version:
1. Why writing about the work is dicey
First, the fundamental problem about the artist discussing the work: The artwork should speak for itself. This is indisputable. The piece should be given its time and its due consideration. It is to be looked at, for some time. This product of the artist’s thought, imagination and construct stands on its own, resolved and independent of any ramblings that the artist may express. It is a form to be considered. The verbiage is something else. Motives and intent are interesting and may well give some viewers a different way to approach the work or overcome initial resistance to something seemingly unfamiliar, inaccessible or unappealing, and that is good, but it may be nothing other than earnest rambling that gives a spin on the work. Sure there has always been the discussion about the reception of work being more substantial by an “educated viewer,” and what follows are some of my preoccupations or agenda in making the work, but in the end, I like the idea of a positive reception of the work unadulterated by my words. The viewer already brings so much to a piece - that is enough – the artwork and the viewer. Give it a chance to engage your imagination. You, the viewer have a world of knowledge and associations that come from your own experience in this highly visual world, more than plenty to authentically respond to the work. The critics devote themselves to writing the text and making the statements about it. And even if their observations are sound, valid, pertinent, eye-opening, guiding, informative, revelatory… none of it is the work. These are pretty sound concepts. Some things can be said by the artist and it can’t hurt, but it is not the work. Intent is not the work. Failed intent or false intent can still be linked to powerful pieces. And the opposite is certainly the case. What the artist thinks about, acts upon, obsesses about, uses as a trigger or is a mission - conceptual, political, lofty, guttural, formal, stolen thoughts, incomprehensible rambling, engaging juicy stuff that is full of intellectual meat or jargon or thought-provoking, earthy, simple truths, are still words, that entice, confuse or repel and they are not the work. The work is the work. The rest is something else. With that said, here goes a bunch of thoughts about the work.
2. About the artwork
I believe that all serious artists, (who pursue their work in earnest), in any discipline, beyond the love of and need to make what they make, are seeking some truth, recognizing it (or hints of it), expressing it and sharing it. Up to the time I started this metal drawing thing, I was making much non-objective work, in which those truths were bigger, more abstract and felt loftier. In recent times, the figure has reemerged, as more appropriate to the more immediate, smaller truths that fleetingly reveal themselves in what I see, think about and draw.
Of all the things that interest me, it is the human condition, human behavior and the mind, perception and consciousness in particular, that interest me most of all. The rest keeps falling in as a comparison or subtext to the whole human condition thing, (by this I mean that the occasional landscape or still life is a reflection of how we see and think and relate to such things). Over the years I have been preoccupied by the remarkable resilience of hope, optimism and intellectual curiosity in the face of all that should stifle these positives. To name a just a few of these more negative or challenging forces, there is corruption, (of thought and action), countless failures, cruelty, indifference, war, pestilence, the fragmented and fickle nature of human consciousness, (in its forgetfulness, confusion, distractibility, denial and distortions, faltering and powerful memory and the impact of emotion, limits and distortions of perception, (and its further distortion in interpretation) - and with all that, consciousness is majestic in its beauty. The list goes on and is addressed in other places on this website.
As I get older, the desire to balance the positives and negatives of our perceived world, through the work, seems less important. In the past this was not so. Many works over the years, representational and non-objective alike, attempted to engage some parity between these generally good and less good aspects of living, thinking, priorities, experience, consciousness, memory, behavior, society and our relationship with nature. I did attempt to inject some awkwardness, imperfection, and dissonance into the work. There was, I hoped, some humor embedded too. All this remains in the current work, but the balancing act, some equalization of elements, is no longer of importance.
We are all a product of our experiences and our times. As a young child, I dreamt of one day making work like that of Velasquez, Goya, Delacroix and many others. Early teens in the Northeast meant being immersed in a version of the 1960’s with a very heavy exposure to and willing reception of Pop Art. This overlapped with the discovery of German expressionism that created a deeply ingrained synergy. Much later, as an art student, in my late twenties, the discovery of the poetics of abstraction, and Abstract Expressionism in particular, created the amalgam of interests and voices that influence me to this day. This is of course a gross simplification, but captures some core scaffolding.
In many of the years that I painted non-objectively, drawing, in a conventional sense, was to some degree removed from the process, (although, putting any tool in hand to apply any medium has some intrinsic aspect of drawing involved). This long-held effort to recede from drawing, or at least the attitude I have when drawing, is worth mentioning, because it is the drawn components in the paintings of many of the masters on my list of idols that have always excited and inspired me. This is particularly significant right now, given that in my current work, drawing is everything. Painting, I am sure, will resurface eventually.
My current project is the making of drawings that are being fabricated into metal. I have been on this concept for a couple of years and it is a very exciting journey. The nature of the surprises in this process, are significantly different than those when painting. Surprises are so important. For all that I achieved in painting, my approach to the medium, in all its forms rarely provided the rawness component that I hungered for. It does provide a lyricism that is wonderful. It aligned itself with my most romantic sensibilities. A positive, set of ideas about grand possibilities, in the discoveries and mysteries of our existence, the universe and the future, whether accessible to us or not was always in the mix.
Drawing, in its immediacy, in the greater urgency with which I make it, in the more percussion-like nature of my address of the medium is more tied to my currently dominant interests in the raw, concrete aspects of life, perception and experience. It is more linked to the less dreamy, less grand, more grounded, crude, of the moment attitudes I have in perceiving our world and our place in it.
It is all marvelous, (even with all the inevitable horrors and unnecessary tragedies) - life, perception, the journey of thought, the struggle to clarify and to make something that attempts to convey meaning.
Gary Swimmer
January 2012
A. Synopsis:
I believe in the work I consider complete. There have been many that failed that test in time and I have reworked or destroyed them. I ask that you just look at the work openly. Give it a bit of time, consider it for long enough that it may interact with what you bring to it.
I believe most artists are digging around for some kinds of truth, some semblance of meaning - a deep desire to express or reveal some small, commonly held idea(s) or sensibilities that merit further reflection or closer introspection – and for visual artists, like myself, painting or drawing, in their silence and stillness, provide the best way to make these statements. I am not drawn to the many words that would be required and my work remains in its entirety, available for contemplation, unlike the ephemeral character of music or other 4D forms. This is its strength and its weakness, because the ephemeral has a unique power and fragility that I cannot engage. These issues encapsulate a very large part of my compulsion to put together marks, colors, images, forms…
I have engaged painting and drawing, figures and non-objective work for years at a time. Each has its own nature and brings different aspects of my thoughts and expression into play. Issues related to the human condition and human behavior in particular, as underscored by the nature of consciousness and perception are consistently on my mind.
Making the work is joyous effort, and likely shows through, as does my general optimism, even when dealing with less pleasant issues. Subject matter varies widely, and style, like color is interesting, but secondary, in that it is only pertinent to the individual piece or idea. I can say that I generally tend to more expressionistic, more raw, less refined forms, edges, transitions, …because such work invites a little less homage to skill, technique or perfection and sets a tone that is appropriately less resolved, stable and aggrandized. This kind of visual seems better aligned with our best, most hopeful, profoundly limited selves, our fragmented consciousness, distorted memories and perceptions, our error-filled, fragile existence. One that is exposed to countless ‘unpredictables’, ‘ineffables’, absurdities, changes, perceived positives and negatives enormous highs and lows, and much worse. And all the while most of us retain optimism and a persistent curiosity. This gives a closer glimpse into some of my preoccupations and motives for visual expression.
A few words on the actual process, one that engages the body and the senses completely. It is a highly focused, intensely condensed patch of time. Prior to this, there are often periods of thinking, reading and even notes when not making the work. Once the activity of drawing or painting starts, it is a form of disciplined play. Most of that activity outside the studio is buried, irrelevant, or it might, in ways that are certainly not definable or conscious, contribute to the activity of making the piece. Choices are made, techniques employed, and the “zone,” that artists in all disciplines know, the place that authentic creativity takes place, is required. It is a place of concentration, where seeing, responding and acting are in harmony. It is a context of sustained, confident, spontaneous sets of almost intuitive moves. This is something that comes with experience. Over-planning, over-thinking, once the work has begun, only stultifies the process. Self-consciousness crushes freshness, inventiveness, risk, flow… Taking risks, building a form and responding to it, moving forward until the work has a life, is the basis of engendering vitality in the piece. That is the play. I suppose it comes from years of stumbling, failures, technique (including the defiance of that technique), and feeling comfortable with one’s materials. It allows for and calls for new solutions, new choices and moving at one’s authentic pace, (one that varies with the situation at hand, as do all these things). This is why returning to a work in progress requires some amount of staring time. It is this activity that allows a legitimate reentry point into the activity of continuing to engage the piece. A point is reached when there is a combination of forms and interactions that seem complete. This point is hard to put into words. It is often achieved at a moment when the piece is not too refined, not overly finished, but sufficiently rich with information and interactions. Once little refinements are engaged, already a less spontaneous, more self conscious act, the piece is being decorated, cosmetics are at play and the essence of the work is being diminished. It is then a time for some destruction and fresh engagement.
B. The Somewhat Longer, More Detailed Version:
1. Why writing about the work is dicey
First, the fundamental problem about the artist discussing the work: The artwork should speak for itself. This is indisputable. The piece should be given its time and its due consideration. It is to be looked at, for some time. This product of the artist’s thought, imagination and construct stands on its own, resolved and independent of any ramblings that the artist may express. It is a form to be considered. The verbiage is something else. Motives and intent are interesting and may well give some viewers a different way to approach the work or overcome initial resistance to something seemingly unfamiliar, inaccessible or unappealing, and that is good, but it may be nothing other than earnest rambling that gives a spin on the work. Sure there has always been the discussion about the reception of work being more substantial by an “educated viewer,” and what follows are some of my preoccupations or agenda in making the work, but in the end, I like the idea of a positive reception of the work unadulterated by my words. The viewer already brings so much to a piece - that is enough – the artwork and the viewer. Give it a chance to engage your imagination. You, the viewer have a world of knowledge and associations that come from your own experience in this highly visual world, more than plenty to authentically respond to the work. The critics devote themselves to writing the text and making the statements about it. And even if their observations are sound, valid, pertinent, eye-opening, guiding, informative, revelatory… none of it is the work. These are pretty sound concepts. Some things can be said by the artist and it can’t hurt, but it is not the work. Intent is not the work. Failed intent or false intent can still be linked to powerful pieces. And the opposite is certainly the case. What the artist thinks about, acts upon, obsesses about, uses as a trigger or is a mission - conceptual, political, lofty, guttural, formal, stolen thoughts, incomprehensible rambling, engaging juicy stuff that is full of intellectual meat or jargon or thought-provoking, earthy, simple truths, are still words, that entice, confuse or repel and they are not the work. The work is the work. The rest is something else. With that said, here goes a bunch of thoughts about the work.
2. About the artwork
I believe that all serious artists, (who pursue their work in earnest), in any discipline, beyond the love of and need to make what they make, are seeking some truth, recognizing it (or hints of it), expressing it and sharing it. Up to the time I started this metal drawing thing, I was making much non-objective work, in which those truths were bigger, more abstract and felt loftier. In recent times, the figure has reemerged, as more appropriate to the more immediate, smaller truths that fleetingly reveal themselves in what I see, think about and draw.
Of all the things that interest me, it is the human condition, human behavior and the mind, perception and consciousness in particular, that interest me most of all. The rest keeps falling in as a comparison or subtext to the whole human condition thing, (by this I mean that the occasional landscape or still life is a reflection of how we see and think and relate to such things). Over the years I have been preoccupied by the remarkable resilience of hope, optimism and intellectual curiosity in the face of all that should stifle these positives. To name a just a few of these more negative or challenging forces, there is corruption, (of thought and action), countless failures, cruelty, indifference, war, pestilence, the fragmented and fickle nature of human consciousness, (in its forgetfulness, confusion, distractibility, denial and distortions, faltering and powerful memory and the impact of emotion, limits and distortions of perception, (and its further distortion in interpretation) - and with all that, consciousness is majestic in its beauty. The list goes on and is addressed in other places on this website.
As I get older, the desire to balance the positives and negatives of our perceived world, through the work, seems less important. In the past this was not so. Many works over the years, representational and non-objective alike, attempted to engage some parity between these generally good and less good aspects of living, thinking, priorities, experience, consciousness, memory, behavior, society and our relationship with nature. I did attempt to inject some awkwardness, imperfection, and dissonance into the work. There was, I hoped, some humor embedded too. All this remains in the current work, but the balancing act, some equalization of elements, is no longer of importance.
We are all a product of our experiences and our times. As a young child, I dreamt of one day making work like that of Velasquez, Goya, Delacroix and many others. Early teens in the Northeast meant being immersed in a version of the 1960’s with a very heavy exposure to and willing reception of Pop Art. This overlapped with the discovery of German expressionism that created a deeply ingrained synergy. Much later, as an art student, in my late twenties, the discovery of the poetics of abstraction, and Abstract Expressionism in particular, created the amalgam of interests and voices that influence me to this day. This is of course a gross simplification, but captures some core scaffolding.
In many of the years that I painted non-objectively, drawing, in a conventional sense, was to some degree removed from the process, (although, putting any tool in hand to apply any medium has some intrinsic aspect of drawing involved). This long-held effort to recede from drawing, or at least the attitude I have when drawing, is worth mentioning, because it is the drawn components in the paintings of many of the masters on my list of idols that have always excited and inspired me. This is particularly significant right now, given that in my current work, drawing is everything. Painting, I am sure, will resurface eventually.
My current project is the making of drawings that are being fabricated into metal. I have been on this concept for a couple of years and it is a very exciting journey. The nature of the surprises in this process, are significantly different than those when painting. Surprises are so important. For all that I achieved in painting, my approach to the medium, in all its forms rarely provided the rawness component that I hungered for. It does provide a lyricism that is wonderful. It aligned itself with my most romantic sensibilities. A positive, set of ideas about grand possibilities, in the discoveries and mysteries of our existence, the universe and the future, whether accessible to us or not was always in the mix.
Drawing, in its immediacy, in the greater urgency with which I make it, in the more percussion-like nature of my address of the medium is more tied to my currently dominant interests in the raw, concrete aspects of life, perception and experience. It is more linked to the less dreamy, less grand, more grounded, crude, of the moment attitudes I have in perceiving our world and our place in it.
It is all marvelous, (even with all the inevitable horrors and unnecessary tragedies) - life, perception, the journey of thought, the struggle to clarify and to make something that attempts to convey meaning.
Gary Swimmer
January 2012