Untitled 11
(2010). 40” x
50”. Acrylic
polymer
emulsion
on paper
mounted
on canvas.
Private collection.
by intuition, I filled a squeeze bottle with
paint and grabbed a panel. I set myself some
very simple rules. Squeezing the bottle above
the surface with concentration, I would make
a line as parallel to the edge of the panel as
possible. When I got to the end, I would turn
around and continue, not too close and not
too far from the previous line and parallel to
the previous line, even if that line had strayed
a bit. It was purely an experiment — I did not
have any expectation of it being an interesting
painting. After years of meditation practice, I
thought it would be easy to go right down the
picture plane with nice parallel lines, like a ruled
piece of paper. But at this, I failed miserably.
And yet, it was in that apparent failure that I
found something intriguing. I realized that a
cohesive structure emerged from this failure
to make parallel lines and it was a record of,
or representation of, my concentration, of my
observing mind.
So it started there and over the years I have
slowly added more simple rules to the mix.
SciArt in America August 2013
At this point, each painting has a detailed
schematic and anywhere from 5 to 24 support
drawings that help me identify the nature of the
particular structure and help me to memorize
it before beginning the painting. The inner
architecture of the work is wholly dictated
by what paint can and cannot do: the spaces
between lines and how much paint can be put
down before you get a mess, etc… But despite
the structure coming from the limitations of
paint, I soon found the work to be echoing
structures found throughout the natural world.
Later I also discovered complexity theory and
the principle of emergence and found that
the unexpected, but welcome “surprises” that
were occurring in the work were in line with
the emergent principle, where unpredictable
complexity arises from a set of simple rules. I
also later found a correlation in my work to
Cymatics, or the study of the visible structures
of sound, which can be seen most clearly
with a Chladni plate. Discovering these ideas
occurring in the work without my imposed
intent has completely fascinated me. Whereas
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