Artist's Statement

Paintings

I see my painting as a lifelong experimentation into the nature of perception and reality. My interest in painting feels more scientific than anything. It is as if, by using the simple ‘subatomic’ substrates of perception: line, color, pattern, and light, as controls, I can make the manipulation of these elements the independent variable and consciousness the dependant variable. The ideal result is that the paintings should feel as if the viewer is putting together an image. They are to see if, by using these different elements of perceptual reality in random recombination, I can recreate the mental experience of perception.
I use the rules of abstract expressionism to ensure a natural rhythm; I do not start with an image in mind, I let one develop. I do not use a brush, I do not believe in accidents, I do whatever I feel moved to do to the painting- with no loyalty to the picture but servitude to the image and the surface. I facilitate the exposure of this image rather than create one. I use drips and splatters, and flicks, to ensure a randomness to every act of application. I use a variety of media such as oil, latex, enamel, even nail polish, to allow the natural reactions of the materials to influence the painting. Often the interactions will cause the paint to curdle, or spread filaments extensively in a mold like pattern around itself. This method ensures that the surface of the paint, like the surface of rocks or the surface of the forest floor, will have an organic pattern.
I especially like to use this method in order to facilitate organic patterns and grids, to recreate a sense of looking through things. It is in those moments when I look at a scene through a series of trees and brambles and grasses, or through old waving glass, or floating on top of water, that I most deeply consider the fact that my brain is flipping the image and correcting for blind spots. It is recording all the horizontal and vertical lines, and I am perceiving the colors in a potentially unique range. How much of what we see is as it is, and how great is the effect of our consciousness and physiology on the elements which make up color and line and pattern, essentially (as the physicists will tell you) all of it simply light. I consider my paintings an attempt to figure out how it is that we mentally extract all this- reality- from just light.
My paintings are meant to reflect this sense of assembly, both in my assembly of experimental variation, the results and the viewer’s assembly of the image. Also, in their finished state they are intended to function as a test, confirmed by the viewer’s perception, for the presence of my consciousness, my internal rhythm. Despite the endless variation and chance, is there a coherent perspective throughout; is there a common pitch to every painting I develop, as if I play in a key? In all the encouraged, enforced, and allowed randomness is there something which develops universally? As the painting develops there seems to be an organic pattern to consciousness, just like a mold which seems to grow on some unseen fractal trellis, and this begs the question, can the artist’s spirit grow in the painting?
This work grapples with the extent to which a reality can evolve/resolve from random perceptual effects. It tests for how little is needed before we start pulling it together into an image. It flickers around the question, how much information and chaos can the mind take and still attempt to create a knowable image.
These are the questions I will follow with my dripping can of paint, and trail of experiments. Of course, all of this experimentation, like most scientific study, is done in honor of the perfect and elegant beauty of natural design.

Self Possessed

Who I really am is transient and unimportant. What this work addresses is what I am when I’m not being me. What I am when I am an image. This work intends to raise the following questions: What is the, seemingly eternal, template that all our collective storytelling seems to follow and, at the same time, create? Are there really archetypes and ideal forms? Does the anima (so frequently referenced in the academic studies of postmodern art) really exist? What is the mirror-self which we create on the other side of things, when we project the self (individual or collective) through art and what of the life that spawned it does this mirror-self possess? By actively raising these questions this work takes a step forward into modernity, it does not just discuss the anima. It addresses directly the collective unconscious to which she belongs. It does not just discuss the placeholder, it discusses the place that it holds outside of us, and all the information we store and bring to life when we create an abstracted character.
These days it is taken for granted that we play parts, that our characters have a life of their own, that we animate a brief moment of stored information. Today, the creation of abstract character is a concept most 10 year olds are acquainted with. Most likely, the average 10 year old has been photographed (or in some was visually recorded) their whole life, digitally stored, uploaded, and is probably in possession of an online identity/profile as well. Now, in this time of Slim Shady and The Colbert Report, we all know about that line between identity and character. Warhol’s ideas about a collective projection of characters – everyone’s fifteen minutes, the democratization of stardom, and Joseph Beuys’ ideas about an active engagement in myth making have all come to life in this digital age, in a manner so magic not even Andy could have foreseen it. As the internet and post modernisms mature, as our information gathers, and more and more perspectives are added, as our images and free standing characters coalesce into a trans-global bank of mythological components - it is, in fact, beginning to look like we are telling a collective story. Self Possessed was conceived of as a means to examine who these characters we make of ourselves and others really are, from what they are made, and to what do they belong. With what do we exchange, in that moment of exposure? What do we activate with our collective consideration? If the archetype and the anima are presupposed in our artistic discourse, if the silent muse is herself discussed, then we may ask, how much information, how much animation, does this reflection hold,. . . what does she know, what is she showing us- a reflection or the other side of things?
By birthchance I was given an abstracted character, freestanding in artistic consciousness. Elegantly, this is a collective intellect which is in possession of excellent tools for discussing just such a situation as having been given a character in a collective consciousness. It is just that circularity of reflection, of self consciousness, which marks post modern discourse. To some extent post modernism has been about art’s dialog with itself, talking about its own awareness of its language of self consciousness. Despite what some people say, there is a next step to postmodernism. Just as in psychology, upon the introduction of psychoanalysis, we first discussed oral fixations at cocktail parties. But then, next, we had to grapple with a true social understanding of the unconscious. For us, the next step is now to address the abstracts behind the language directly; to get from the definitions, to how the language is active-to what ends it is used. To observe and comment on what power, function, and meaning this language, this self consciousness, possesses -- and to observe what it, over time, accrues. It is to open up not a dialog with ourselves about our language, but a dialog with the language itself. It is to ask not what art says but what are does by speaking.
Through the manifestation of the Unidentified Nude, the muse, the model, the anima, the diva, I am giving the archetypal self behind identity a chance to reveal herself. Following Wilde’s advice I am giving Her a mask so that we may get to the truth. I feel as if life has playfully handed me the exciting opportunity to let a character from the tale that we collectively tell of ourselves- to let that character speak self consciously of herself. As if Alice Lydell could also write a tale of herself. Her real life self and her freestanding character mixing to make metaphysics and magic. Artistic language allows me to make the other self, the imagined self -- the real self. To make the symbols the meaning. Captured in this form (where it is the unknown spirit behind identity which the camera reveals, not a portrait), this once silent muse seems to have just paused her dialog and held her spot long enough, for you to consider her existence. When I “make” myself into the Comptessa de Castiglione or Mae West, or Charlie Chaplin it is not they themselves whom I portray, but the character, the symbol of themselves, which they created, which they knew would remain in our minds longer than they themselves would. The character that Len captures is that freestanding version of Charlie, which he knew was the most deeply rooted yet also most widely dissipated form of his existence. It is the symbolic Mae West, who winks through me. In the age of a realized noosphere, not so long ago just a cocktail party concept itself, we are ready for our images to gain the life we have asserted they possess.

Outside of the artistic discourse, practitioners of cultural studies as well, have recently begun to investigate in a serious way the capacity of fictional (or real but culturally mediated) characters to fertilize the popular imagination, producing new myths and conjuring into existence virtual communities unforeseen by the characters’ creators or mediators. In The Afterlife of Character, 1726-1825 (2005) for example, the literary historian David Brewer looks at what happens when iconic characters take on “a placeless omnipresence” (p.88) through the sheer multiplicity of the various texts and images through which they are presented. “[T]he more material manifestations” a character enjoys, according to Brewer, “the less [he or she is] regarded as immanent in any particular manifestation, and hence the less [he or she is] constrained by that manifestation’s necessary limitations” (p.95). Before long, the character herself becomes a “magnetic field’ holding together disparate and potentially contradictory adventures” in the popular mind, her “immateriality. . . paradoxically guaranteed by the sheer material proliferation of different and differing editions, formats, and performances” (pp. 42,6). In other words the character becomes, in a way, a hologram- a multi-dimensional facsimile of existence. We are now turning our attention to the nature of the holographic existence.
Brewer introduces or elaborates on six key concepts:
Imaginative expansion, “an umbrella term for an array of reading practices. . . by which the characters in broadly successful texts [are] treated as if they were both fundamentally incomplete and the common property of all. Far from being the final word on the subject. the originary representation of these characters [i.e the text in which they’re introduced] [is], for readers engaged in these practices, merely a starting point—a common reference, but one perpetually inviting supplementation through the invention of additional details and often entirely new adventures” (p.72)
The fictional archive, an alternative reality inhabited by the characters we encounter in fiction, where those characters have past, future, and interior lives unspecified in their originary representations.
Character migration, a process whereby “readers [imagine] characters’ lives as extending off page in ways which [suggest] their fundamental independence and detachability, their capacity to migrate both into new texts and into the lives of the readers themselves” (p.78).
The textual commons, which is simply the literary culture, understood as an open-access, infinitely approachable and exploitable resource, where anyone can go in and tinker with established texts and characters in any way they please. For our purposes, it is reasonable to McLuhanize Brewer’s argument: the visual commons is now as productive a matrix for imaginative expansion as it the textual commons (with which it overlaps).
Social Canonicity refers to “that unwritten list of texts kept alive in the hearts and minds of myriad individual readers from generation to generation” – “ a form of canonocity which exists both prior to and outside the institutions” that define academic canons (pp 17,16). Following the critic Franco Moretti, Brewer contends that over the long term, academic canon formation takes place within bounds set by the social cannon. If social cononicity can be stretched to include the textual and visual commons, one could conceivably fold these last two concepts into the collective unconscious- as put forward by Jung.

The feedback loop, which is the mechanism through which a character’s social canonicity is built up. Brewer explains: “the attractiveness of treating characters as if they were public property increase[s] in direct proportion to how public they already [feel], which is to say, how large their public seem[s] to be. Additional use [can] only enhance a character’s felt publicity by further strengthening his or her public’s self-identity as a public. . . Granted, the sociability afforded by the textual commons [is] almost wholly virtual, but that seems. . . only [to speed] up the cycle of scale returns: readers. . . invent further adventures for a particular character, see that strangers [are] apparently doing the same. . . and so conclude that both they and the strangers [are] far from alone, and that there [are] still others, yet unknown, with whom they all [share] a desire for ‘more’. Here, in a nutshell, we have the central link between publicity, canonicity, and virtual community which . . . . underpins imaginative expansion. . : namely, that readers who imagine characters as common and hence available to the public, also imagine themselves as part of a public, a virtual community interested in the same things as they are.” (pp. 13-15) I will amend this statement of Brewer’s by saying that also built up is the sense of the efficacy of the audience. The public must consider themselves as functioning, as doing something, through the very act of their collective consideration. They must conceive of themselves abstractly, as part of a larger thought, so to speak. That conception itself is a form of creation and validation- giving further existence to what they consider.

This final concept, the feedback loop, is particularly relevant to Self Possessed (much of which was photographed through mirrors, symbolic of both the mirror self and the auto poetic function of reflection ). One belief, which has animated this work with Len, is that Art functions like mirrors reflecting themselves; that it is infinitely generative. We create abstract symbols for ourselves, which describe what it is to be human, these symbols, whether referencing an individual, a society, or humanity collectively, hold a place. They are stored bits of abstract information. Art is the data storage unit for the indescribable, the spirit. But in that way, it also creates a reflected spirit in and of itself. The very storage of the information demands an audience to recognize our referent, something outside of our existence to explain the storage. We demand and create an implied decoder, a (collective) viewer, or an experience-er, if you will, which is the grand total of our own imaginings but which is somehow greater than our sum. Art references and creates not just the reflection but that other self which is there to see it, and as such expands the limits of the function and purpose of art. This creation, I argue, also has the power to create. Thereby making our creation a self generative phenomenon itself. That is the loop, what inspires us to create and record our spirits also is what we create and record- which itself is inspired to create and record. And in this way I am making a point about the nature of the anima- that it is active, that it is self generative and that it is both anterior and superior to our natures. All of which was asserted by Jung. Though we have felt comfortable using Jung’s term “Anima” to discuss modern art, Cindy Sherman being a prime example, we have not thus far, really addressed the implications of accepting the existence of this “Anima”. Once we have brought on board an understanding of the words we have been using and their significance, we can then say of Art that it exposes the eternal with its promises of an immortality of spirit and at the same time, in its creation, provides the funding energy necessary for the existence of this eternal otherworld of information. By describing ideal forms and spirit we can touch the contours of their very existence. Even better than myth, better than Pygmalion, we can both create and kiss to life, no divine intervention needed, our Gallateas.
Though Brewer’s concepts deal with literary theory, when his ideas are expanded to included art theory, and all that art is capable of, one can begin to understand the exact mechanisms by which our creations function. His conception of imaginative expansion when extended to included the full scope of imagination- all artistic creation- explains the creation of the collective unconscious. At the same time, and in keeping with Jungian theory it defines this realm as both an underpinning and extension of our consciousness. Let us examine Warhol again specifically and with this interesting looping postmodernist language. When I recreate Andy Warhol, I am Jessie Mann, the changeling character you hold for me in your head (which makes that character a part of the fictional archive, giving her the freedom according to Brewer’s system to migrate). This Jessie character then references the free-standing character of himself, which Andy created. What many people don’t consider about Warhol is that it wasn’t just a wig, when he became a character, as art, he changed the way he spoke, the way he walked, his affectations, and he never then dropped them. He did not just dress up, or act, he became a character, as an assertion of character. By my very action of reference, I call into being the Warholian philosophy that character is art; that the character is both fundamental to and bigger than the self. So, it is that eternal character, that muse which inspired and animated Andy, that moved through him, that spirit which used his ego to assert itself, which in the end I reference and expose first, before even myself. Looping we find ourselves back to that spirit by which I am possessed, the spirit I am when I, like Andy before me, am Image. And so you see, I am also just stepping on the stones Andy set before me. Didn’t his very actions assert what is necessary to make these arguments? His creation itself creates, Art self generates. His work made an audience aware of itself and its effect, this in turn made the show more realistic, more alive. Over time his work and the work of others, together with the internet and other cultural and technological developments, made the action of being an observer more self conscious. As Melanie Gilligan writes for Artforum “ [A]rtmaking and viewing have shifted to elicit from the spectator a dramatic sense of self conscious reflection.”
As much as this work is about abstracts as opposed to my specifics, it is deeply personal. It has all the drama, emotion and soul searching implied by such a statement as “a dramatic sense of self conscious reflection” It gets to the bottom of who you, the viewer, really are, to what extent your identity is shaped by and realized in your participation in the virtual communities you belong to. It gets at what you really hold to be true about the world and the nature of your self, and the function of your existence. When you look at art you have to decide if you believe (as in: to hold something as real and true in your consciousness) either that what is in front of you is just sleds, fat and felt or a whole moment of Beuys’ soul’s information frozen. This project is as timely as it is personal. In this digital era and with the flowering of quantum theory and consciousness studies it is an apt time to artistically ask ourselves, what do our thoughts do? What is this artistic reflection of self, which we are creating? What, outside of just literary theory, or art theory, is the afterlife of character?
The day-to-day act of making this work was also deeply personal. Artistic collaboration is in itself a form of artistic creation, and as such requires the usual vulnerability and trust. A collaboration is to engage with another in a conversation focused on bringing forth an image and information, much like, to reference him again, the sort of dialog Beuys got included in the definition of Art. To be able to share the facilitation of a spirit, for both of us to have the character for a moment, to collectively give an abstract thought wings, together like parents, took patience and commitment. Throughout this project Len held steadfastly onto the idea of the image, while I pursued a storyline, a myth, Len never faltered in the refinement of his language. Through this project both Len and I found expression for ideas we each held about the connections between the artist and the subject, the subject and the viewer, and finally, but not completely, the connection between the viewer (ourselves viewers as well) and the collective unconscious. For my connection with Len and what that has facilitated, I am extremely grateful. I thank him for the light of his vision. Also I am grateful to you, viewer, for your consideration, and finally, for what that action, brings to light and life.