NOTES ON ABSTRACTION
“Abstraction emerges as a sort of necessity, as the only viable language through which to express the unseen, the unknown, the transcendent. Not as a style, not as an intellectual adventure, though it most certainly is both things, but as a way of embodying for us that which we might not be able to know or access otherwise. Religious iconography, representation, and picturing bring us too quickly to language, to reference, to narrative, to the worlds we might already know. Abstraction asks something else of us; to be present with what we see, and what we feel, and to where it might transport us. Art, and abstraction specifically, has the ability to push us towards other kinds of knowing, other relationships with concept and meaning making….it allows for a kind of nomadic thinking, functions as an intermediary between states of consciousness and perception, creates space for us to inhabit some of those uncomfortable territories in between…There are so many different ways that art can function, so much work for it to do in the world. I’m interested in how art can open up alternative visual experiences that align with internal spaces, altered states of consciousness, euphoria, complexity, and the unpresentable. Abstraction, especially, is an expert intermediary, translating the nonverbal and not quite visible realities into perceivable, material form. Artworks can function as runners between realms, physical and philosophical both. There’s work to do here for paintings, for images.”