the medium is the message

The journey in the studio this year has been toward flow. For me, at this moment, the medium is the message; I never want people seeing my work to forget that they are looking at paint on surface. It is the ability of the human mind to transform message into meaning (or meaningfulness) that most interests me. All painting is illusion to a greater or lesser degree. It seems, -to me, to be distinction between passive and active illusion. One attempts photo-realism through an intense set of processes, but these are designed to fool the eye. The viewer believes what (s)he sees because it is rooted in the familiar if not always the comfortable. With abstraction -and in this way I have never understood the aversion so many people have to it- one is compelled to engage the mind and imagination and to play. It is simplistic to suggest this is merely about "experience" or "feeling" because these are vague and generalist terms for a very specific action; engagement. The job of the artist, then, is to engage. The audience must also bring engagement.

I don't set out to make difficult work. Again, at this moment I am exploring material concerns, or the plastic, but I eschew the notion of painting about painting. At best, this idea is disingenuous. At worst it is academic and pretentious. No, what is going on at this moment is a level of comfort and trust in my materials; that (obviously in a consciously directed process) the behavior of paint and its relationship to surface and light will foster a willingness on the part of the viewer to engage the work. There are certainly thematic currents which run through my oeuvre, and I do not deny them. But I feel that pre-knowledge of these themes and ideas are unnecessary to attribute meaningfulness to the work at hand.

I feel a quickness right now in the studio. A certain sense of mastery but also a constant nagging of imperfection. The "divine dissatisfaction".

"There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. ... No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others"

-Martha Graham