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Center of Narrative Gravity #44 Painting

Andrew Werth

United States

Painting, Acrylic on Wood

Size: 12 W x 12 H x 1.6 D in

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Artist Recognition
link - Featured in the Catalog

Featured in the Catalog

link - Showed at the The Other Art Fair

Showed at the The Other Art Fair

link - Artist featured in a collection

Artist featured in a collection

ABOUT THE ARTWORK

In science, abstractions can be helpful tools. An object’s Center of Gravity is a useful concept for performing calculations on objects. Even though this center isn’t a physical thing, it lets one predict how real objects will move about in the world. Philosopher Daniel Dennett coined the phrase “Center of Narrative Gravity” as a metaphor for The Self. The Self isn’t a physical thing but rather a useful abstraction: it is the virtual center of the set of stories we weave about ourselves over time. The paintings in my ongoing Center of Narrative Gravity series all follow a similar format: a swirling gradient of colorful marks on top of a swirling gradient of background color. Together, the interaction of colors between these gradients produces a sense of a nebulous center with ambiguous edges whose depth and shape change as you look at it.

DETAILS AND DIMENSIONS
Painting:

Acrylic on Wood

Original:

One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:

12 W x 12 H x 1.6 D in

SHIPPING AND RETURNS
Delivery Time:

Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.

I have long been interested in the mind: consciousness, perception, thinking, psychology, and the self. My ongoing study of these and related subjects informs much of my abstract painting. The titles of my paintings are clues to concepts that I find fascinating in the philosophy and science of mind. One idea I’ve found particularly intriguing is the notion of embodiment: that how we make sense of the world is directly shaped by the physical nature of our bodies. For example, the colors we see are due to the pigmentation in our eyes as well as the neural structure of our brain. We generally think of vision as being like photography, where an entire image is presented to us at once. However, vision might be better compared—surprisingly—to touch, since it is only through the continuous probing and movement of our eyes that we are able to construct the world around us. Notions of embodiment, metaphor, and mental “strange loops” are recurrent themes in my work. My paintings are built up through a slow, deliberate process that consists of thousands of individual brushstrokes applied one at a time. The markings (derived from the mazes I drew as a child) provide a structure in which to explore perceptual effects and the interaction of color. I design interactions between the underpainting and the mark-making and between foreground and background at multiple levels of abstraction. I strive to create paintings where the viewer will want to keep looking, from near and afar, from different angles and in different lighting, always finding something new to stimulate the eye and the mind.

Artist Recognition
Featured in the Catalog

Featured in Saatchi Art's printed catalog, sent to thousands of art collectors

Showed at the The Other Art Fair

Handpicked to show at The Other Art Fair presented by Saatchi Art in Brooklyn

Artist featured in a collection

Artist featured by Saatchi Art in a collection

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