Falderal (Revised) Painting

Even Muddy Rivers Flow Here on canvases, both scavenged and unfinished, referenced by “revision,” painting acts as a way to connect the past, present, and future. As a metaphor, rivers have a similar effect as they are in constant motion. For me, the profundity of art is in the process. I don’t think a work of art is ever finished, but rather chosen to be “realized.” It is similar to looking at an old yearbook picture, where you are the work of art. None of these canvases were blank or bought, but found either in the trash or on the street already marked with texture, color, or rips. Therefore, each canvas brought about its own set of challenges where I had to make use of what the canvas had to offer. I am reminded that beauty is in the imperfect, that within the broken, dirtied, and unrealized, epiphany can be found. Abstraction is so much of what we don’t see in reality, however feeling or synapse that I believe we all experience yet do not have the ability to articulate, an expression of the spiritual. The intrinsic nature of this spirituality is in the process of the painting’s making, where the presence of the artist is required until the artist decides to call a work finished. Art is the artifact of the presence of the artist. I am continually reminded that art acts as a lens between universality and singularity. Furthermore, with the gift of perspective. For what I don’t see, you may see. In this exchange, I believe art has the capability to be prophetic. An artist’s role is to be the reflection of society, to expose the nuances of tonality that is witnessed, to repeat. While a river appears to have the presence of stillness, peering in, we realize it is not.