Your Process....

So I thought it would be nice if some of us talked a little about how we do what we do. I'm sure people have different creative approaches, but there are bound to be some similarities.

For me, different styles require different creative tactics. One of my painting styles requires me to flat out work as I go without planning or thinking, only a deep sense of style and technique. This usually brings about fluid, loose and kinetic forms that generally are a harmonic mix of machines and organic anatomy. I've seen other artists work this way and the end result is similar. It is useful when I am trying to refine a personal aesthetic that hopefully will include and transcend a majority of my previous works and serve as a springboard for a visual dialog between myself and other artists working in similar ways. A good friend often talks about "soul aesthetic" in art, meaning that art may be used to express the nature and power of the soul, the completely original yet collective manifestation of the beauty of who you are. 

Another style I enjoy requires me to research my past doodles and notes from random journals and sketchbooks. Once I find certain elements I like I re-assemble them in a collage fashion, trying to create new understandings from old meanderings. This collage serves as one portion of the painting, the other portion usually consists of creating a person from fluid contour lines who is to be the witness of this puzzle of juxtaposed notes of the nature of reality. These are my philosophical works. They often appear as puzzels even to me when I am finished which is part of the reason why I am attracted to them.

What is shared among different styles of working for me is the process of discovery. This can be looked at as both good or bad. Some people like to know exactly what their visual outcome will be, but I never know until I am finished. This is what pushes me, it is like pulling away the curtain on different aspects of yourself that you never knew existed. Or as Alfred North Whitehead calls it, revealing our most "secret self". This is what makes creative expression so valuable, it gives us moments of clarity into who we are. It is fresh too, alive, because there is no where to hide. It celebrates the open, the real, and often times certain truths.