Present Tense Painting

Artist Statement Raul Dorn When attempting to explain my visual work I find focus at the core of a continuum of searching for personal truth and divine spirit through the process of painting. I am interested in that which lies beyond behind and beneath the perceived visual realm of experience. My goal is not to replicate the visual environment or portray nouns, but attempting to discover what is not visible through the creative act. My process often begins with quickly paced sessions of automatic improvisations to activate the surface, to call forth an unfolding event that has no preconceived destination. The process then slows down to a more reflective stage as I begin to discern what arrives; clarifying emerging shapes and forms, adding, subtracting, following my gut, trusting intuition, looking for the whisper of a narrative. Composition is at the core of the push and pull, the arriving and departing of imagery, layer after layer. Areas begin to connect to one another as references to the landscape or the human figure often arrive. Abstraction thus suits my quest to locate the spirit of subject, visually manifesting the undercurrent of the subconscious, or what I refer to as divine spirit. Not knowing the next step in the painting process, not having preconceived limiting nouns as subjects, groping for clues, recalibrating, letting go, going within - keeps me searching for that connective dance with something mysterious and much greater than myself. "What is real is not the external form, but the essence of things ... it is impossible for anyone to express anything essentially real by imitating its exterior surface" - Constantin Brancusi.