Artist Statement
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| The artist's studio. |
When
I was young, artist statements were relatively easy to write; just state your
imagination, energy and capacity to grow. Now, the statement has become a
different challenge. Now I know I paint because I must; and what a hole its
absence has left in my life since I have been sick this winter. I know that returning to the studio
will be a vast contribution to my recovery. I paint in series and cycles but I
hope that my work is never perceived as boring and repetitive.
I
began as an abstract painter, and I even won several prizes. But the
implication of landscape kept appearing (horizon line and trees,) so I decided
to go with it. There was lots of transitional paintings but the landscape
became the stronger work. The perceptive eye will see the abstract skeleton or
grid but what is supported is readable and real. Why did landscape win out? There are many questions in art
that have no answers.
I
am a committed gardener and often work from that which is, after all, a reduced
landscape - nature reduced, edited. As a rule I work from more than one study
at a time, seeking to avoid copying from myself.
I’m
drawn to the River Charles, and its marshes. A
big theme, one that I’ve found to offer limitless variations: time of day,
change of seasons- it never bores me, I never tire of it. Memory, after
observation, becomes the driving force- one forgets, adds, subtracts an all
take energy and imagination, until the painting becomes the product not the
process.
Bravo! Mr. Rayen, Well Done!
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