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I want to say, “Go back and look at the works, don't read this.” But you are here, let me try to say something. The problem is that writing is so different from visual experience. What I "say" or "write" about my work might confine it in ways I would rather allow to remain ambiguous.
My art develops intuitively, but with an eye on the art I have looked at and studied since I was a child. The process of creating the work is important to me. Sometimes I use an idea (or even a photograph) as the point of departure, but once I get into the work, it takes on a life of its own, and, suddenly, I am exploring visual memories, inventing new experiences and, basically, having a good time. I hope to instill a sense of joy and energy into all my works.
It doesn’t matter what I do first or second. Slap on paint with a palette knife, make a charcoal smear – whatever the beginning, I trust I will know when the end is reached. That can take time. I’ve re-worked paintings that were over ten years old, but for me that was not starting over or destroying anything – it was a continuation of non-verbal thought, getting on with a dormant process. For me, those objects, the paintings, are in some deep sense, alive.
My inspiration rests in the various styles of expressionism that have arisen since the turn of the twentieth century. I am not trying to invent a new language, but to give form to my own personal visions (or nightmares). I see whimsy everywhere, even in the most serious aspects of humanity.
My sensibility is very much guided by my studies in anthropology, and I see the artist in our society as a last vestige (and an important one) of the shaman that once taught people that, to paraphrase Hamlet, there are more things in heaven and earth than is taught in our philosophies. If we lose all mystery to science and scrutinize our wonder out of existence, what will we become?
Creative expressions such as visual art, music and writing is all we have left of the magical thinking that used to characterize human thinking. As science shows us more and more just how biological and material our existence truly is, art allows us to give form to that which cannot be distilled by scientific testing - the generative imagination.
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William Poe
Paintings and drawings
Silver Spring Maryland
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artspan is contemporary art