Description
Action painting is a very direct, instinctual, and highly dynamic kind of art that involves the spontaneous application of vigorous, sweeping brushstrokes and the direct effects of controlled splattering and dripping paint applications. Using these techniques spilling paint onto the canvas creating a movement and swirl the eye follows from one electric area to another. At times I may apply sand or grit to certain areas or utilized whatever is at hand to create a textured landscape and a feel of otherworldliness.
When I am creating an action painting I am inside the painting. I become the brush, the stick, the implement that “moves” the paint and causes it to behave how I will it to so as to create my inner vision. It happens “naturally” as there is no pre-drawn sketch on the canvas nor in my mind…there is only an automatic response to what I “see and feel” while creating. When it is good, I will be in a deep dripping sweat, when that is missing it is “not working” for me, and that canvas is destroyed. Only perhaps 1 out of each 10 will make it to where I am satisfied that some hidden, Electric, vision has been revealed. Each person viewing one of these works of art will take away from it something within themselves, something they saw and felt and that will be only theirs and no else can see or feel it the same way.
This is what I create in my action paintings… and that feeling you get when you view, is my greatest creation.
Abstract-Contemporary-Modernist and/or a blended combination of all…what is your style? What style do you paint in? How many times I have been asked this question. Why must there “be a style”? I get asked by Galleries, Art show promoters…people…it is like you MUST have a stated “style” to be an artist. Well…I always answer the same “I don’t have a singular painting style, as that would be a trap. Whatever I paint is my style. In this way I can speak volumes on a great many topics”. When you paint in an Automatism way, your style, use of brush stroke, way of handling a palette knife, your use of color varies not only work by work that you produce but moment by moment “within” a particular work.
A painting that may be heading to be a landscape traditional painting all of a sudden takes a turn and is now a contemporary abstraction that somewhat resembles a landscape but is now more about the color and textures and “feel”. Sometimes I am asked “What is art”? “What makes something a work of art”? It is a very complex question yet I think so remarkably simple an answer. To me “Art is whatever you see that creates an emotion or strikes a response within you”.
That is all any good artist hopes to achieve. My art is not about some plan or some social statement or political agenda…my art is about creating an emotional response within the viewer that may have a lasting effect. Hopefully you find one of my works that does this for you!
