"Painting in the Round" + Color + Future Topics

Cyberspace III
Acrylic, resin and Masonite on wood panel
1' X 1'
2014

Concerning the notion that a painting becomes an object once its sides are painted:

I paint the edges of my panels white in order to frame painting as a dialectical inquiry within space and surface.  I acknowledge and accept the fact that my paintings are hybrids.  They intentionally include performative, sculptural and architectural elements that enhance the overall illusion of form, movement and space presented within the painting's surface.  

By presenting the painting's surface face-up, I show how media can have canonical shifts depending upon their relation to the body.  For example, a sculptural element can become a painting from a perspective in which its plane becomes flattened and illusionistic.  Because of the relativistic nature of these spaces, the canonical shifts are both reversible and topological, existing in constant flux.  In essence, the elements within the surface are never clearly defined, but are ultimately necessary to simultaneously contradict conventional dogma and push the limits of what we consider to be painting.  

This approach to painting is what I call "painting in the round" or "emergent painting", and can be observed in other contemporary artists' work that juxtaposes elements of installation, sculpture and architecture within the context of painting.  I believe painting in the round provides the unique opportunity to exploit useful obstacles that can challenge assumptions and expand painting into new territory.  It's both an emergent and dialectical process of discovering the possibilities of what something can be by creating relational contrasts.  The strategic placement of seemingly non-painting elements allows for painting to emerge from in between canonical shifts.

The role of color:

My general argument for the use of color in paintings is that we experience life in color, and in the spirit of authentically communicating our experience, we are permitted to use color as liberally as necessary.  In my own work, I've found color to be helpful in describing space and coding individual compositional elements with archetypal associations.  Temperature shifts and color contrasts can create more complex figure-ground relationships than simple value shifts.  Furthermore, the sensations that occur from perceived temperatures and chromatic optical tensions have the power to dictate the tenor of the whole experience of the work.

Future topics:
> Using conceptual Jiu-jitsu on modernist painting to create a space for feminist discourse in postmodern painting.
> What it means to "wrap" illusion around sculptural forms.  Illusion as connection, sculpture as disconnection.
> Cyberculture in relation to the point of view depicted in my work.
> The politics of creating aerial landscapes that cannot be viewed in their entirety.