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ARTIST STATEMENT

The aim is to see…
That which others don't notice
Reveal it to them

Conceptual art is defined as “art that is intended to
convey an idea or concept to the perceiver and need not
involve the creation or appreciation of a traditional art
object such as a painting or sculpture”. For me,
conceptual art cannot retain its dramatic effect precisely
because regardless of the intended impact there is
nothing left behind to fasten the concepts to. This is why
I choose to work as a painter and also why the
statement “a picture is worth a thousand words” will
always be true. I believe in taking the strong ideas
behind a conceptual piece and assigning them a visual
ideogram that acts as a key for understanding the
concept. I feel that art should have a specific statement
to make that is larger than the visual elements but that
which can also be distilled down to a tangible symbol.

Governments know this and it’s called propaganda.
Churches know this and it’s called religion.
Corporations know this and it’s called advertising.
Artists know this and it’s called Truth.

The visual physical world is connected in subtle ways that
can be easily overlooked. I work from my own
photographs to discover the connections between
seemingly disparate elements that combine to form a
greater reality than their independent parts. I transform
actual visual images into a third-generation idea from
physical reality to camera to canvas. I am interested in
the underlying associations formed by the repetition of
shapes and lines from not only material forms but also
those of transient matter such as shadows and
reflections operating on the same visual plane in a
realistic abstraction.

I am interested in conceptual painting with technical
facility, beauty and emotion combining abstractive
elements within realism. My intent is to strive for
fulfillment in every element concurrently providing a
strong vehicle to carry a belief through the painting to
the viewer while making an aesthetic contribution. I do
not work in a series but believe that each painting is
autonomous and stands alone as a symbol or “glyph”
encoded with multiple interpretations subjective to the
particular observer. The individual paintings come
organically one at a time and it is only later that I realize
some of them are actually siblings.

The imagery in my work may appear to be surrealistic but
it is derived solely from elements actually experienced in
a conscious visual state rather than the emphasis placed
on the subconscious and automatism that surrealism was
founded on. While I am influenced by surrealist
juxtapositions, I consider myself a Patternist primarily
interested in the affinities of emerging connections when
taken as a whole. Patternism is reality viewed as a wave
rather than a particle. I believe that there is infinitely
much more to conscious waking reality and my goal is to
show glimpses of the structure behind that reality.

I aspire to create art rooted in representation yet
perceived in an entirely different organization, for
example as with Cubism, Pointillism and Impressionism.
These movements embody physical reality but from a
completely dissimilar facet. For me, abstraction can never
come close to revealing the mysteries of the physical
world in which we live, while painting that remains
embedded in representation can.

Contact@TSmithArtist.com