Opacity Is the Illusion of Nothing I had an experience at Starbucks, looking out the window at a restaurant neon sign that malfunctioned, spelling out two different words, Liberty and Libe. One word was the restaurant ad about freedom, and the other was a nonsense syllable that seemed to contradict the first word. In my research, I found that libe is a C library that deals with data structures in computer programming. I wondered about the nature of free will. In trying to make sense of this event, I became aware of the capacity for chance happenings to expand our consciousness beyond the normal limits of our understanding. I incorporated the sign metaphor into esthetic principles I had worked with before, and used chance events to determine elements of form and color in the new paintings on which I was then working.
Accidents in our work allow us to consider elements outside the limits of our personal experiences. The artist has an opportunity to examine these events and incorporate new components into a composition, hopefully expanding the artist's and the spectator's vision of the world. In some ways, this relates to early 20th century principles of Dadaism, as well as mid-20th century performance art like the Happenings of Allan Kaprow and other artists.
Before Starbucks, I had been experimenting with visual metaphors for the human condition, often expressed using ambiguous space and form, as well as imagery obscured by overlapping layers of paint. After years of analyzing the uncertainties of our existence, I finally concluded that there are vast dimensions of reality beyond the realm of our understanding. This may include dimensions of reality other than the one in which we presently exist, realities we do not have the capacity to recognize or decipher, though we may have a spiritual sense of something significant infinitely greater than we are outside the reach of our rational minds.
I have attempted to express this transcendent nature of reality in a variety of ways using multiple dimensions of space, form, and color, including abstract images with ambiguous meaning. I noticed in earlier experiments that painting over something on a canvas does not remove it, but rather masks it, removing it only from conscious recognition. We see the surface image, but the underpainting changes the image in such a subtle way that our conscious mind does not see the underpainting. The invisible changes the visible. Elements of uncertainty in physical perception allow one's mind to interpret on a very subjective and imaginative level.
In painting, I use elements of random events in combination with intuitive and rational decisions, all in an attempt to expand our perception of the world and its infinite possibilities. I start with a concept, and then continue in the style of an abstract expressionist in making rapid decisions with paint on canvas. During the work, I change directions according to accidental events that have taken place on the canvas, sometimes painting over a canvas three or four times. At the end, I reevaluate my work and make conscious aesthetic adjustments in order to unify the composition into a coherent and integrated object. Still, there are dimensions in the work that I cannot fully understand. The sense of mystery remains.
In any work, there are uncertain elements - things we see but do not know we see. Opacity is the illusion of nothing. Through a combination of transparent, translucent, and opaque layers, I have attempted to present images that both reflect and transcend our physical existence. Even the bare canvas contributes one out of an infinite number of meanings that exist within a painting. The meaning of a work is different for each viewer, and it changes each time the viewer looks at the same painting.
One of my most frustrating experiences as an artist is trying to evaluate my own work. Each time I look at a painting, I respond to it in a different way. It is impossible to separate the painting and my perception of the painting, and my perception is constantly changing. When we look at something, we view it from the perspective of a living organism, not as though we were a camera. Our perceptions are personal, subjective, and subject to continual modifications, a function of whom we are as human beings of unfathomable depth and complexity living in a world of continual change.
The Starbucks experience began a long period of analysis of our thought processes - the subjective elements of perception as it relates to the nature of reality. Translating some of these concepts into visual metaphor, the image becomes a statement about the dematerialization of form. In this sense image becomes non-image. Form is an illusion - our interpretation of an infinite variety of relationships between fields of energy. Our minds create images from these forces, filling in voids in our perception from a vast library of personal impressions and experiences.
We live in a world of illusions, attempting to assure ourselves we have a reasonable understanding of reality. Occasionally we are humbled by the awareness that reality is not objective truth but a fiction of our imagination. In my own work, despite the use of Dada techniques, I attempt to find some degree of tranquility in the classical ideals of beauty. A sense of order is conveyed though the harmonious interaction of layers of mysterious shapes growing from inscrutable processes of creation. These are ephemeral images of the concrete, built upon tiers of multiple contradictions.
