Core Visual Idea

I went to an artist salon last night. The critic was excellent. One general thing he said sticks with me ... the importance of identifying and focusing on the core visual idea of one's artwork ... as particularly articulate and insightful.

Back to the artist statement drawing board. I end up having a difficult time with this since I feel that I can talk about my work in basic ways from more than one approach.

Drawing is the core; so, I start there when I talk about my work. It's how I approach every piece I make or consider making in the context of proposals or project ideas. But why drawing? That's a lot harder for me to answer. Some sense of touch, even if it's virtual or mental? A sense of linearity (verses solid volume), rhythm, grace?

Identity, what is something, what makes it something, when does it stop being that something, how does something change in communication and through perception, is another core.

Paradox, or acting against a rule/convention/material property is another core. Working on a 3D surface to make it 2D, working on a 2D service to make it 3D, making something hard look soft, something soft look hard, using the conventions of one media to make work in another media. I think this is motivated by interest in identity and perception.

Experiment/Play/Process is also a core... finding the piece by going back and forth between the concept and the execution. I do have an end game ... I am interested in the piece that is found, not so much the journey, though I generally can't find the piece without the journey, and I generally can't take the journey without having a destination in mind.

Vacillating In-Between is also a core. I really like work to hover here, to the point where I risk criticism for not pushing in one direction or the other enough, when my urge is always to push things back to the middle, kind of like moving toward the mean in statistics.

Grounding/anchoring in some representational or iconic image, usually art historical, is also a core element of my work. I can't decide whether this is a necessary entry point into the work for me, or whether it has been what has allowed me to enter my work to date, and can now be let go or forced to fall away.

Perhaps it also helps to identify what is not at the core, at least in this moment in time.

Color. While I enjoy playing and experimenting with color relationships as an exercise of sensibilities and perception, so far color has not been a major part of most of my final pieces and projects.

Politics, social issues. Not that I don't think about politics and social issues, but I find my attempts at including any sort of visual political commentary end up too literal. So, I do not to think too directly about this kind of content, and instead, I let whatever is there in the mind infect the work. My interest in reuse of materials is partly motivated by aversion to waste.