Ascension-1 Sculpture

Artist Statement My work is a contemporary statement through the perception on Inner space and Outer space juxtaposing with time and space of life experience, I incorporate visual, emotional and psychological impressions of urban tension, raw emotions and harsh realities tempered with gentle optimism and beauty seeking the combination of objective and nonobjective serves as a matrix between social and cultural spaces. The space we live in on a day-to-day basis, most of us are so caught up living in this world as it is that we don't have much time or energy to focus on how the world might become better and For many--probably most--people, the reality of those choices are not usually acknowledged consciously, at least not on a daily basis. Such people live according to habit, and exist within choices given to them through mainstream media and educational systems, economic necessity, and immediate need satisfaction. But, if we take time to reflect about it, we find that, in each given moment, we have the ability to choose how we want to perceive the world, and how we want to live in it. If we face up to them, we have fundamental choices to make about who we are in the world, what the world means to us, and what kind of world we want to help create. By creating art for me the most satisfying way of working is the combination of the abstract and the figure. The freedom of abstraction and the emotions that the figure can carry with the symbolic potential of the objective world and the possibilities abstraction presents in suggesting the unknown. My paintings operate somewhere between abstraction and the cognitive world, between the unknown and the known. The works often begin with a general idea I might be reflecting on reactions with cultural and personal events of Inner Space and Outer Space associated with our lives, thoughts, memories, and imaginations. I translate these reactions into works made up of simplified forms, often with outsized proportions, to transcend time and space. I try to paint what I believe in, eliminating any marks or images which feel disingenuous, listening to what the painting is telling me to do rather than imposing my will on the work. In this way, it is my hope that the paintings aren't driven self-consciously. They should emerge from a more enigmatic, less familiar place. In the process of painting, initiation, manipulation and removal of marks become one of the action and reaction.