Better Than a Stick in the Eye Print

Born: Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Living and working in Harbin, China. Artist Statement: I have always understood painting as a medium that embodies a thought process which depicts an accumulation of marks over a period of time. My paintings are a record of actions and reactions which often result in explosive, fractured, and chaotic images. I am interested in paintings that need to be visually unpacked; to discover which actions or marks came first and how they were applied and constructed. I am fascinated by the ways in which children and adolescents create images. I currently teach English as a Second Language (ESL) and art lessons to students from grade one to nine in China, and I am impressed by how direct, uninhibited, and honest they are in the ways in which they create their images. The way they freely create their images reminds me of my interests in the Surrealist technique of automatism or “taking a line for a walk”. The brutal and direct manner in which the kids carve out their subject matter with pencil, crayon, or paint relates to my interests in the various Expressionist movements. What interests me most are the cruddy drawings scrawled on the back of homework assignments that I collect from the “bad students” who do not pay attention during my English lessons. I look at these drawings and wonder if they are merely created out of boredom or are attempts at rebelling against such a strict upbringing and controlled society. I pursue no objectives, no system, no tendency; I have no program, no style, no direction. I have no time for specialized concerns, working themes or variations that lead to mastery. I steer clear of definitions. I don’t know what I want. I am inconsistent, noncommittal, passive; I like the indefinite, the boundless; I like continual uncertainty. —Gerhard Richter Me, too. —Manuel Ocampo Me, three. _Sebastian Alsfeld