Artist Statement

“You are outside life, you are above life, you have miseries which the ordinary man does not know, you exceed the normal level, and it is for this that men refuse to forgive you, you poison their peace of mind, you undermine their stability. You have irrepressible pains whose essence is to be inadaptable to any known state, indescribable in words. You have repeated and shifting pains, incurable pains, pains beyond imagining, pains which are neither of the body nor of the soul, but which partake of both. And I share your suffering, and I ask you: who dares to ration our relief? We are not going to kill ourselves just yet. In the meantime, leave us the hell alone.”

- Antonin Artaud

Antonin Artaud once said, “…lines of poetry are not explained.” I think the same holds true for my work. If you have spent any time at all on my little site here, you already know I am an Artaud fan. Artist statements are designed to explain what the artist does and why. I have no explanations. If I had to pinpoint it, which it seems necessary to do in these instances, I would say my desire is to draw from the viewer an emotion, a thought, a curiosity, an imaginative spark. Whether positive or negative, these reactions validate any nonsense I happen to slap on a canvas. I have no qualms in admitting that they are indeed nonsense. A painting instructor in college once remarked to me about one of my pieces, “I don’t know if I like it. But I can’t stop looking at it.” That’s good enough for me.

My influences have changed within each season of my life. As a child I was an avid reader of fantasy fiction. Inside my library are the remnants of this childhood haze- all the Oz’s, Narnias, and Middle Earths I once traveled- worlds littered with magic wardrobes, silver shoes, and golden rings. I looked for these worlds beyond the pages of these books. I secretly wished that every woodland path lead down a magic rabbit hole. In truth, I still do. Gradually, one learns that in order to find magical realms one must create them. My tool became the colored pencil and crayon, but I would hope to be considered a storyteller.

Then fall and winter fell and my influences took a darker turn that would become a central theme to how I viewed the world. Unicorns gave way to dragons. My magic rabbit holes revealed more than waist coated rabbits with gold watches, but mad hatters and jabberwockies as well. Yet, I also began to learn an important lesson. There is beauty and inspiration in these things just as there are in butterflies and rainbows. How boring the world would be without shadows to give depth and perception. How grating life would be if the sun never set. I found I was more comfortable in the dark corners of my imagination, and there I have remained.

In college I fell in love with the theatre, which to me is the ultimate form of Art because it binds all elements together to create one masterpiece. The writer, the artist, the musician, and the actor work together in this medium like no other. The terrible shame and irony lies in that the work is so temporary. Once the performance is over, it wisps away into ether- living only in the memories of the creators and the audience. Yet, that is part of the magic too. I found myself trying to capture some of the feathery pieces of the theatrical experience before they fluttered out of my mind for good. This longing to bind the unbindable spilled over into my painting.

Today my work is a collaboration of all these stages and seasons. I care very little about straight lines and proportion. I also give very little attention to all the things they teach you in Art school about consistency, or even accuracy. My work thrives in imperfection. I dread the perfect line, the perfect shape, the perfect anything. For once you have achieved perfection it means there is nothing left to discover. It’s the end of the journey- the end of the adventure. What I offer are not complete stories. They are lines of poems, flashes of dreams, lost puzzle pieces and random debris carried by the wind and dropped wherever they’re dropped. The viewers may conclude from them what they will, and I hope that they conclude something, anything, even if the conclusion is just as vague.

My work is a walk through the magic mirror. It’s a trail of bread crumbs in the forest. Sometimes it’s a crawl under the mountain. So take a lantern and follow me.

Artist Statement

Bon Lee Gallery

The Sketchbook

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