ARTIST"S STATEMENT

"The layers of my art..."

The Meaning:  The following topics are at the core of what drives me to make art:

1. SPACETIME, MATH, and the UNSEEN | From my earliest childhood days, I contemplated questions of origin, seeking still the depths of the universe within and the universe around me.  Through my curiosity, I discovered a broad array of data and how intricately these pieces of information connect.  The first serious artwork I created about spacetime, multiverses, and parallel universes was in 1989 (Age 14/15).  My most common visual representations of the unseen pertaining to spacetime are sand, geometry, contrasting edges, galactic references, kinetic references, mirrors, and time-telling device references. 

2. LOVE and FEAR and their respective BRANCHES | I understand both love and fear as the origin of all motives and have seen the lightning bolts each creates.  The upcoming Sacret Hearts Show installation explores these topics in greater detail.  Red is the all-inclusive color I use to contextually represent these ideas and their branches.  

3. MAGICK | I define magick as unexplained science rather than magic.  The unseen doesn’t frighten me so much as it excites me.  That feeling of magick originated during my first and favorite memory and has been the unicorn I’ve chased ever since.  #makinmagick  I always seek the science behind the mysteries which intrigue me most.  In my work, magick visually presents itself as something “invisible” such as glass, mirrors, mysteriously suspended objects, and so forth.

4. PROPORTIONS | While scale is irrelevant, proportions are critical.  Proportions are historically prominent in my work.  Both paintings and sculptures are proportionately designed and visually balanced.

5. DUALITIES | Every coin has two sides, but I prefer to deal in multifaceted diamonds.  In other words, I see multiple sides to any story and explore their extremes.  In exploring the outskirts of the spectrums, I understand the possibilities and can, therefore, make more accurate predictions.  Dualities are what give me the capacity to expand the pattern of my artistic web father than most can see.  A time will come...

6. EXPERIMENTATION | From fashion to chemistry, I experiment.  I play.  Continuously learning, pushing forward, connecting information, theorizing based on my discoveries, and so forth.  Shakespeare said, "All the world's a stage..."  and "To thine own self be true."  It is, and I am.  Reminds me of Descartes... 

7. YOU | My art originates from within me, but it is inspired by you.  Most of the art-making happens in the analytical aftermath of the life situations I’ve endured.  I have a plethora of stories to tell about people who impacted my world from both near and far, in positive and negative ways.  My inspiration is endless because you are endless.  

8. RELIGION, CULTURE, & HISTORY | I collect the resonant parts of the world and combine them into my own recipe which finds a way to emerge in my art through a menagerie of symbolic references.  I don’t belong with one.  I belong with all or none.  

9. TRUTH | Like it or not, truth inevitably spills into art.  And, like all things, the truth has layers.

10. LAYERS and WEBS | All origins branch and all branches branch.  Life is a complex series of fractals, deep webs of sorts. Perspective is proximal. To see the connections and patterns on various layers, one must perceive them from various points of view, both in slices and as one.  Only at a distance does the pattern of the web appear. 

11. PHILOSOPHY & SCIENCES | At the root of my work is a philosophy, a belief, a feeling… something intangible but prominently driving the creation of art and giving it multilevel purpose.  From Plato to Nietzsche to my own deductions, philosophy plays a critical role in the meaning and essence of my work.  Science proves its truth.  

12. THE ARTS, BEAUTY, & LANGUAGE | All the arts partake in the inspiration process of my visual work through their expressions of dynamicism and visceral connections to my core.  Music, dance, languages, and various other expressions inspire me in ways I can’t even begin to summarize!

​

Thank you for taking an interest in my work!  I hope it sparks something good in you, and you shine that shit for light years!

"The layers of my art..."

"The layers of my art..."

Emergence | Jar of Hearts series

Standstill | 2008 | 24in x 96in

Into the Night | 2009 | 24in x 96in

Broken-Hearted Genius | #nikolatesla

Soulfire | pla on canvas | approx 40"

work in progress

#sacretheartsshow

The Process:

I use whatever medium necessary to convey the message.  Sand, wood, fiber, steel, light, anything I can access that is applicable to the birth of a relevant idea.  The most important elements of my designs are texture, color, and space in conjunction with proportion and balance.  Not to say that other elements and principles aren't important to the designs, but these are on my visceral layer.  Designs begin with a "big bang" moment of inspiration triggered by an external source.  In that moment, a feeling is evoked.  Then visual images appear in my mind as shapes, colors, lines, dimensions.  Sometimes I feel them as a specific vibration, or even as if I can touch them.  I frequently sketch them but, at times, I'm confident I won't forget. 

The process of the physical work varies depending on its dimensionality.  3D usually has a more intense engineering layer.  Painting has superimposition of color layers similar to how Photoshop functions in regards to transparencies.  4D has layers sliced in a different direction than 2D and requires somewhat of a freeze-frame thinking ability, a breakdown before the buildup.  However, the pre-work iterations are plentiful whether they happen in my mind or on paper, regardless of dimension. I work out every detail of an idea. I consider all of its possibilities, meanings, and abstractions.  Einstein said, "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler."  I live by that.  I widdle an idea until it is reduced to its simplest form.  At times, this process takes years between concept to completion.  Art helps me work out my theories of the universe and some of those take years to work and rework.  Each artwork is equivalent to a mathematical equation.  There were certainly many iterations before Einstein arrived at E=MC2.    

​

Music, dance, and performing arts have always been an extension of my visual art.  They aid in my inspiration, but also broaden my scope of understanding as each is a language in its own right.  The more languages one comprehends, the stronger and more abundant the relationships between them.  Naturally, this impacts how I express myself visually.  The depth of this web is far too grand to discuss here so I'll leave you with this:  the more you know, the more connected things become.  There's little with which I haven't been able to connect on some level.  

​

​