The Forgotten Grapple Painting

Mortimer McPherson Artist Statement With over Thirty years experience as a fine artist and more than Twenty years teaching Visual Arts I have learnt much, and grown much. I create with any medium at my disposal and that which best fits the subject, whether it be pencil, pastel, charcoal, acrylic, oils or even wood and glass carving. As a Fine Artist I am drawn to the insignificant. I render each moment, each person, each object with love and attention making the insignificant significant. I strive to evoke an emotional response from the onlooker by painting and drawing character and not just reproducing a plastic likeness of my subject. My interests have become exceedingly experimental with more attention placed on the surfaces of the work itself. Discovering and rediscovering my chosen medium is the everlasting stimulus that keeps me interested and excited. Accidental process and meticulous planning co-mingle in all my work. Texture, either real or illusionary, and that one ever-elusive brush stroke, pencil stroke, the one that says it all; this keeps me searching and exploring. I believe people are attracted to good drawings as well as the intrinsic pictorial value of a work of art. I also believe that drawing is to art what the spine is to the human body and that viewers and collectors will appreciate the time spent on a work as well as the story behind the piece. I also believe that the sum total of an artist's experience begins at conception. At birth the fashioning begins-throughout his entire life he cannot separate himself from his early beginnings. The fashioning of an artist is continuous, and the artist must seek to become a part of his landscape, to feel with and appreciate all nature, so that he will be able to reconcile with himself. Only then can he consider himself an artist, true to his beginnings and steadfast in purpose - becoming and being a medium of expression - a communicator, a creator and portrayer of truth; taking no sides, but being at the same time emotionally attached and connected with God and self.