Art: A Process of Transmutation

Seeing, as the visual artist understands it, is an act of selective observation; it is the attainment of visual literacy. Thinking perceptually manages the means by which the artist identifies and expresses with conviction and clarity a personal inner vision and creative urgings. This unique process of thinking VISUALLY provides the conduit through which paintings, explicitly guided by an honest inner-upswelling of deep-felt personal responses, can effectively and convincingly speak with an inner energy worthy of respect, appreciation and value. This act of transmutation remains a constant mandate in my work; and once adhered to equips me to assimilate and personally evaluate all sensory experience, shape my responses to visual stimuli, and avoid acts of mere narration, the habit of mimicking, or any persuasion to follow the foibles of stylistic consensus.

During this crucial process a shift from object-mindedness to relation-mindedness takes place; the artist never states things, but states relationships. Physical facts recorded on the retina; i.e., barns, boats, rocks, trees – all flora and fauna as well as ideas and dreams – are symbolically transformed into the language of images. My paintings evolve as metaphors – symbols of who I am. Objective reality is replaced by visual equivalents. Things as such dissolve and are resolved into visually perceived optical units and the invisible forces that affect their behavior; i.e.,– shape and linear areas, passages of color and dark and light, texture and tension, etc. Physical reality is eclipsed, loses its position of dominance in attitude and ceases to exist. Intuitively fitted together, these visual elements and forces breathe a life of their own, are valid, self possessed, self proclaimed entities. They announce their own identities and speak for themselves. When allowed a ‘voice’ a new direction is established, a new kind of thought process awakened, a venue for thinking visually forged and a vehicle for creative expression has emerged. I am armed with and employ this visual language with its own unique vocabulary, and proceed with my work.

The attainment of visual literacy is not only essential but fundamental to my perceptual thought process. I engage it, I acquire its methods, I espouse its means. In actuality I am now engaged in a course of action, which if pursued with integrity, allows the laws of visuality to operate and provides the freedom to express my creative intent with sureness, precise expressive imagery and unlimited creative force.

Now, there is that clean white sheet of watercolor paper. An idea has caught hold of my imagination and pushed its way to the foreground of thought, demanding expression. I set about transforming that dead white surface. I see it as a stage, and bring on stage visual elements and forces and choreograph their movements. With a sinewy imagination at work, I proceed to position, reposition, delete, add, alter, juxtapose and arrange my actors and actresses until an arrangement is achieved that satisfies me. I have declared my intentions and revealed my response to subject and scene. I have not reproduced or mimicked physical facts or disassembled natural forms and attempted to faithfully restore them to my surface; but through acts of perceptual awareness I have translated selected physical information or ideas into the language through which I communicate – the language of visual thinking. The inward eye and outward vision have nourished my imagination. A collaboration of visual symbolism and inward creative impulses has been cherished, nurtured and achieved. What I have been inspired to do and what I have wished to express has been channeled and transcribed through the process of transmutation.