A Personal Truth

To express one’s creative voice, the artist needs to create, or find, an internal playing field, a space where they can function in their creative realm.

To do this the artist has to dismantle many of their boundaries which ultimately have kept them semi imprisoned in many ways. If one doesn’t they are forced to function through the intellect and ideas.

Although these boundaries of say socialization give us structure, a kind of social form, many imposed borders can hinder us for our entire lives. Therefore, it’s about awareness not dogma and this often comes later in life.

As these boundaries are dismantled or dissolved…not a straightforward process I might add, the artist increases their creative terrain for play and continuing new perspective. This process releases light that is held within our self-imposed walls of self-definition.

This light relates to space, clarity, and unspoken knowledge. It doesn’t need a narrative.

You don’t need to think about how to incorporate this light into one’s work as it is naturally released and born out of the painting. This can be seen in the freedom and life of many children’s paintings who don’t have the gravity of boundaries set in place as adults do.

When I talk about light, I’m not talking about sunrises and sunsets, shadow and highlights, I’m talking about a sense of rightness, a clarity that artists and others recognize as a personal truth…rather than an aesthetic.

It is the ability of this light to open conscious space in the viewer, to transform the personal into the universal, that is a hallmark of a good painting…a space where people can attain a different perspective on life.