Slipping Glimpse

Slipping Glimpser, 48"x60", mixed-media, 2013

After looking at this painting, a friend remarked that it's a slipping glimpser. She was referring to Willem De Kooning's statement about his desire to capture fleeting imagery on his canvases, although he was also referring to the slipperiness of the paint caused by the additional oil he added to increase viscosity.While no one would mistake my painting for a De Kooning, it still seems like an apt description. My "Slipping Glimpser" is one of a growing number of mixed media paintings I've been putting together for a show this winter at Blindfold Gallery in Seattle.

Painting is arguably an archaic practice in this crazy, fast-paced world that is increasingly digitized and impermanent. It is a slow and often deliberate activity. My own work has gotten increasingly complex in structure and composition over the past few years as I've attempted to digest the imagery that we are all inundated with throughout the day. As a visual person the act of conscious seeing is sometimes overwhelming. While I sleep, all of those images seem to mingle with the real and imagined ones, with memory, space, and time. They later emerge on the canvas.

My process begins with a collaged piece of paper or a bit of paint, or both. They are the opening line of a story with an unknown ending. It sometimes feels as if I'm playing the old "Telephone" game where a phrase gets passed from one person to the next and the next all the while getting rearranged into something new, even though I'm talking to myself. What I glue, the marks that I make and/or the choices of color are all equally intuitive. Eventually a pattern emerges and there it is, a satisfying yet fleeting glimpse.