Artist Statement
Is it possible to reconcile the search for serenity with the effort to have an effective life in society? Is the compulsion for tension a reflection of the power to resist?
Despite things that I want to change outside of myself, I am limited by my individuality. My capacity is only enough for the surface of a painting. Fortunately, this limited power has the potential to reach an unlimited freedom.
Painting is an expanse of freedom; I would not want to narrow this space with rules and habits. I carefully avoid repeating myself; I prefer to add the dynamism of learning to my painting process by striking with a different physical energy, an experimental color mixture, researching a different material.
My painting session is not the realization of a pre-detailed plan but an improvisation, it is unplanned yet not haphazard. I proceed being in dialogue with the evolvement in the formal elements of the painting. In my case, this dialogue means staring at the surface, talking to myself, dancing, pacing, cleaning my brushes.
What I go through is not an experience in which I cast myself in pursuit of perfection, where my one misstep can immediately undo everything. I accept imperfection as an extension of the sincerity and directness of the painting process. I activate my power of resistance and keep searching.
The search for color, which may or may not be related to reality, can be considered to constitute the essence of my painting process. I journey towards distant colors, colors that are neither screaming nor muted, colors that carry weight.
Indeed, a painting can be dark even when it is bright. What brings this about is the act of discovery in the extreme end of each color's character while improvising. While characterizing color (the training of a raw color, i.e. acquiring other identities while preserving it sessence, the emergence of colors with new and different weights), I care for the solidity in the final painting.
The complexity element of my work is aggravated by the collage of contrasting colors and forms, single and multi-layered texture, protected and deliberately destructed surface. Consequently, I aim to overcome the duality of uneasiness and serenity and reach wholeness.
On my canvas, due to the variability of the subconscious imposition of time, memory, form and shape, expression is not in a fixed state; but spiritual surfaces appear, sometimes serene, sometimes dark, and sometimes where the color wanders between muted grays. Tranquil areas and intensely painted areas seek a visual effect in dialogue. When this visual electricity gains its existence, it questions the present statement of expressionism, the highest form of hope in art.
Time is a creation. I value my attempt to preserve the first phases of the painting as a search for synchronicity; I want to ensure that the first and later moments of the painting can be perceived all at once. This desire of mine is consistent with the fact that I constantly carry my past in my mind. From time to time, I revisit an older work; not out of a desire to destroy the past, but to bring it into the present.
My resistance is nourished by my encounter with time and space. Sometimes I resent what exists, and sometimes I gracefully reach out to what does not yet exist. The hope immanent in my work comes out not from the desire for eternity but from the awareness of finitude: Whatever is experienced is temporary, finite. This consciousness always gives me the courage to start anew.
I hope that my work will resonate, but I shy away from the forcefulness of the word ‘resonance’; a more appropriate choice of word might be ‘breeze’. I am aware that life’s meaning is not identical for everyone, and I do not claim to find and communicate a hidden meaning. What I do is to blow on the surface of the canvas and to pass on this breeze, not sparing my fortitude, yet as modestly as possible.