Amygdala Tongue Painting

Statement Slipping in and out of the familiar through abstract mark making, I draw parallels between nature and human nature within my paintings. My shapes coalesce into landscape and figure, eventually dissipating into abstract impressions. This limbo state creates a vortex for multiple forms, ideas, and shared memory. I do not plan my paintings because I sense them noetically. I discern the works passively as deja vu like memories. When visual ideas reveal themselves, they are not used as representations but as communication. What happens on the canvas never matches what I imagine. Discovering and manifesting a painting feels like I’m blind and being led by a river — I can discern the river in so many ways, but I can’t see the river. I intuitively perceive the painting the whole time, but I only see the painting once it’s complete. Bio Michael Nauert, born and working in Southern California, creates abstract oil paintings based on nature, resonance, and mind-space. Awarded with scholarships and grants to study at The School of the Art Institute, he received a BFA in 2017. He also studied at OxBow School of Art in 2015 and 2017. In 2014 Nauert was included in a group show at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, and was a finalist for Murakami’s Kaikai Kiki co. show in Japan. In 2016 he was featured in New American Paintings (Issue 125). Then in 2018 he had his showed with Young Space for his first time in New York. Last year Nauert was published in the 2019 summer edition of Art Maze Magazine, and was interviewed for Friend of the Artist Magazine and Floorr Magazine. Additionally, he showed at Torrence Art Museum in Run Straight Through where he focused on nature-space and painting as a figure. Currently he is focused on the integration of art within cycles of nature. He is designing and constructing an outdoor studio space as well as traveling in his mobile art studio into nature to create this work.