Artist Statement
It has been said that to understand the art of an era you must understand the zeitgeist of the day. Concepts and compositions in my work of the last year have evolved from pandemic challenges of obsessions with "crowds" and the quietude of individual isolation to a pivot of social representation, apocalyptical scenarios, and the continued penetration of human interactions with technology. The daily moral panic of the latter has now challenged my concerns of 'WHAT to paint' to the question of 'HOW to Paint'. Is something "handmade" by a human which a machine could never (say never) accomplish with just a flat screen and pixels make painting more relevant now in a similar way that the camera freed painters to abandon hundreds of years of realism techniques? Has this new technological paradigm made all the earlier calls of the death of painting (in the 70's & 80's & 90's) seem ill-considered? As the current mood of artists denouncing the new "ai artists" as traitors gains momentum I wonder if these new demonstrators are destined to become the modern-day luddites even though some will call them heroes. For myself, I'm more confident than ever that my own and other artists’ expressionism of every mark and brushstroke is what will define this new era of painting by embracing all the tools available. Not as a protest but as a caress.