Some Thoughts On Painting Reality

I spend much of my time contemplating sight and the way my brain perceives the information before me. I think about how I can make painting a more accurate reflection of my experience in this world. I think about how we observe nature as outside of ourselves, but we are also nature. I think about the strangeness of life and the extreme beauty that surrounds us. I wonder about the world and most often wonder about how to make my work more true to life. And by that I don't mean more traditionally representational. I mean more accurate to the strangeness of my own experience.

My work has always been in some way representational. But most people have a hard time categorizing my paintings. Even I am not sure what category they should fit into. This, I think, is because I'm not focused on creating a specific type of art or in mimicking a specific style that already exists. I am instead focused on finding a better way to communicate my reality. My goal is not to replicate the world simply as the eye sees. While a worthy task for some, that has never been my aim. It is the brain that alters and informs the eye. And it is what the brain does with visual and other sensory information that is the most essential element of the reality that I document.

Our personal truth is rooted in our interpretation of things. In the passing of time, the brain distills and alters our understanding. It keeps the essential. It elevates the mundane. It also has a tendency to fail completely or remember falsely. What is it then that we are recording as painters if we want to record reality?  Is it not the brain's emotional response to the information that hits our retina? Painting is about what we take away from what we see. It is about what makes our understanding of the world truly our own. It is about finding and recording a deeper truth, and finding an alternate path to discovering and sharing our true selves. Abstraction and ambiguity is a very real part of sight and memory. Why should it not be recorded as such when we represent reality in two dimensions? What we see before us and what we take away are two different things. What is more real?

Reality is a fickle thing. Time moves relentlessly onward. As time passes, I find myself with ever more questions. Is it possible to use paint to find out more about how we see and remember? How do I translate the abstraction of the brain into color and form? What element of reality am I expressing when I paint intuitively? Can I interpret the way my brain distills fragmented thoughts?  Can it become a true documentation or a true embodiment of a persona through portraiture? How is time recorded in the mind through the act of seeing? Painting with these questions presents new challenges and new approaches to my process. And thus my studio work continues.

Passing

60x48"
oil on canvas

Studio Today

Passing

60x48 inches
oil on canvas

Single Fare 3

February 13 - February 22, 2013

This third annual exhibition invites artists to make work on a tiny, innocuous piece of plastic: the New York City MetroCard!

RH Gallery 

137 DUANE STREET NY NY 10013

Opening Reception:
Wednesday, February 13, 6-9pm

And so I let him out into the world.

oil on canvas
30x40 inches

Gowanus Open Studios

The 2012 Gowanus Open Studios will take place this Saturday and Sunday, October 13th and 14th, 12-6 PM. I will be in my studio all weekend. There will be lots of studios open in my building and nearby, so come on over to:

75A 10th Street
Studio 22
Brooklyn, NY 11215
Map!

Stop by and say hello!

Go! Brooklyn Open Studios

I will open my studio to the public this weekend as part of Go!

Enter at 75 10th Street (adjacent to Lowe's) or 98 9th Street. The doors will all be open so just come on in 11-7 PM. See you then!

During GO, Brooklyn-based artists open their studios to the community on September 8–9, 2012, from 11:00 am to 7:00 pm. Community members registered as voters will visit studios and nominate artists for inclusion in a group exhibition to open at the Brooklyn Museum on Target First Saturday, December 1, 2012.
https://www.gobrooklynart.org/about 

And then it happened.

24x36" oil on linen, work in progress.

Modern In Denver Magazine: Summer 2012

See the painting, Girl Running, in a collector's stunning residence in the Summer 2012 issue of Modern In Denver Magazine:

Words: Eleanor Perry-Smith | Image: Daniel O’Connor

"...From this angle we get glimpses of an abstract black and white Robert Motherwell signed limited edition print and a Katelyn Alain abstract."

Studio Visit Magazine: Volume 18

Find my work on page 4 of the latest publication of Studio Visit Magazine.

"Studio Visit is a series of juried artist books produced by the publishers of New American Paintings. Each high quality volume of Studio Visit features approximately 150 artists, who have been selected by professional curators.

Studio Visit will be received by more than two thousand galleries, museum curators, and art aficionados throughout the country."

Juror: Trevor Richardson, Director of Herter Gallery

Brain, Ideas, Art

Learning about the way the brain interprets and stores information helps me to think about the way I approach my painting process.

When I was first starting out as a painter, I was greatly influenced by the book Art and Illusion by Ernst Gombrich. His writing style seemed hopelessly dry and outdated, yet his words spoke to me as directly relevant to what I was trying to accomplish in the studio. He delved into the way the mind and eye work together to 'see' and understand the world. His perspective was scientific and art historical and there were nice diagrams to illustrate his points. I can see this book on my shelf right now with it's folded corners, and colorful scraps of paper sticking out of it's pages- shortcuts to the many highlighted and underlined passages I've come back to over the years.

I am now reading two more recent books by Eric R. Kandel, a nobel prize winner for his research in brain science. Kandel, much to my surprise, seems to be picking up where Gombrich left off and reinvigorating an interest in what he has termed the 'science of mind.' I am so enthralled with the way brain science affects painting and art that I can't wait to see how his insights will alter the way I consider my own process. I have just finished his very scientifically-focused book In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind (link). And now I am reading the slightly more apropos book The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand The Unconscious in Art, Mind and Brain. (link) I can't wait to finish this book! As I start a new body of work based on portraying memory, I have so much fodder for future ideas.

Record of Memory

On Memory

It is not the literal past that rules us, save, possibly, in a biological sense. It is images of the past. These are often as highly structured and selective as myths. Images and symbolic constructs of the past are imprinted, almost in the manner of genetic information, on our sensibility. Each new historical era mirrors itself in the picture and active mythology of its past.
---George Steiner, In Bluebeard's Castle (1971)

I See The Moon, Milavec Hakimi Gallery, NYC

Jan 12th - Feb 19th 

Opening Reception: January 12, 6-9 PM

Milavec Hakimi Gallery, 51 Cooper Square, New York, NY map

Come see the paintings I've created over the past three years on display in I See The Moon, a group show featuring Katelyn Alain, Dina Brodsky, Scott Kahn, Sabrina Marques, Christopher Saunders, and Ryan Scully.

Images: Gowanus Open Studios

Thank you to all who stopped by!

Gowanus Open Studios Oct. 15+16

Visit my studio in Brooklyn this weekend as part of the Gowanus Open Studios! Map http://g.co/maps/fmbt3

Enter at 75 10th Street (adjacent to Lowe's) or 98 9th Street. The doors will all be open so just come on in 12-6PM. See you then!

Read more about it in this article.

The Dreamer, 12x12", oil on panel

In the collection of the Ten Words And One Shot founder in Germany.

August

4 x 5 inches

oil on specimen photographs

And Then There Was A Perfect Silence

36x48 inches
oil on canvas

 (hi-res)