Statement

[Glen River]

Artist Statement 

The eye and the mind are partners in "Seeing". My art works are dedicated to refining "Seeing" and creating specific visions. The visions are either portraits (faithful to the eye) or constructions (faithful to the mind). These partners cross-pollinate sharing ways of describing the vision and framing the perspective.  The "Portraits" may be of a place, a person, or visual experience of exceptional character. The "Constructions" are most often abstracts and installations. My first portrait of a person was a drawing of my grandfather. My first portrait of place was the lower east side of Manhattan. My first abstract constructions were oil paintings inspired by Igor Stravinsky’s Firebird. Creating a world entirely governed by the rules of art is exciting. The building of a new voice in this visual world combines complexity and degree of difficulty toward a fully realized mature vision.  A scientific frontiers I grew up with was Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity and, Quantum Mechanics. There also, was a vision of a world where form was the quest to explain function. Somehow in my imagination the conceptual worlds of abstract art and quantum mechanics were linked as parallel worlds where principals of function, relativity, design, and purpose all mirrored one another. Science and art continued refinement of "seeing". The Hubble telescope and electron scanning microscope refined our vision, and in art abstract ideas have evolved from cubist statements about the process and vision to a wider concept including the natural world. My experience with these "Symphonic Abstracts" is a window to a frozen instant. This instant is somehow showing a world in dynamic equilibrium. Integrating complexity, simplicity and human scale represents a personal goal. I feel the 2010 abstracts are bringing that goal to a vision I can successfully communicate. I look forward to larger works. Installations combine site specific architectural integration with the vision. Installations also create environments with a balance of introspective peace and a vista. There is an excitement connected with a new frontier I describe as "threshold." It seems to energize both the space and the individual.  The Big Picture, freezes time as well as parts of separate visions. The Installation is 30 panels which are 20"x 30" each hung in a configuration of 6 columns and 5 rows. The approximate size of the complete installation is between 13' and 14' tall and 11' wide. The size and combination of images offers a new canvas able to encompass a greater scope. Some of the source materials are paintings originally created from 1965 through 2007. The mosaic of modular parts seems to be the motif best suited for crossing borders of media and expressing the greater view of my vision. There is a growing community of artists who share the idea that time is a structural factor in art which should be reconsidered. The inclusion of time has always been a concern for artists. The idea of making it a formally recognized element is on-going. Part of my concept of art is art as intentional artifact of its time. The Big Picture (Installation) was influenced by several art viewing experiences. The world wide web provided frames of images which would shift and offer new related or fragmented images. Sometimes the relationships were not immediately clear. Both the web and the dynamic web-art works underlined multiple points of view and glimpses through time. My need for a gathering up from many periods into a larger vision reaching toward unity brings me to the present series of works forming The Big Picture" and following Installations.  New Media explorations found cross-media applications in the mid 1980s and as Marshall McLuhan suggested, shaped the visions to come. As a painterly artist who simply enjoys re-establishing the image on the canvas, I continued to find ways to bring new media back from the digital world.  Part of the cycles of creativity are periods of synthesis. Times where the work seems to coalesce in visions evolved out of many streams of discovery. The "Big Picture" and following Installations where multipart units or sections built to an assembled image were the ground work for the Iconic Portraits of 2012. The abstract worlds and representational combine in these assembled installations expressing a synthesis of form and vision. My love of color has a new freedom for discovery in these new worlds. The simple statement of beauty is always the conductor for these orchestrations.        © 2010 Glen River