Duality

In the creation of art, art is discovered. In repetition of process, finished works arrive from the darkness of our minds, from subconscious fleeting imagery to objects with mass or manifestations of light. Digital or physical, art endures a process of coming into being, an act that can be traced throughout an artwork and contained in the materials it embodies.

Duality is a record of the encaustic painting process as the artist arrives at a complete series of paintings. This digital video contrasts with the physical presence of the paintings, textured as they are with thousands of brush strokes and manipulations with heat and metal tools. In video, time is introduced as a variable, duration becomes precedent, and paintings transcend from still windows cast in time to fossil recordings of a painting process.

This work in entirety represents a cycle that pervades all artwork. In recording process and displaying its unfolding alongside the result, the viewer is invited into creating an installation. In essence, an invisible barrier between artist and audience evaporates, obsolete and exposed as simply a means to segregate and stratify those who create and those who observe. The voyeuristic nature of art is preserved as always, but the art becomes less of an elitist product, and instead an experience set to engage.

Duality, in concept, has been the crux of my art as I have continued with removing my process from the shroud of uncertainty that fine art veils over those who may consider it beyond their grasp or outside their interests.

Encaustic painting is of the most ancient forms of painting, evolving from egyptian funerary masks to its present niche within the nebula of fine art. The paintings begin with wax and resin, followed by pigmentation of the blended materials with minerals. The result is brushed under high temperature or blown with torches on linen or panel. Paintings are cool rather than dry, able to be re-enlivened with heat and further manipulated.

Encaustic paintings never truly accomplish a final arrangement, instead they are halted into static compositions embodying a total unifying process. The surfaces unavoidably change over time, and they are free for further work whenever heat is introduced. Implementing video to capture the events throughout a painting, it's transformation from infancy to adulthood, seemed natural. Paintings can express a sense of history on their surfaces, but video is the medium of time and duration. Video has become the substance of our time, the various forms of light it consumes being the relative of painting and pigment. Colored light is assuming paint on canvas.

The dual components of painting and video comprise the substance of Duality. Existing in two mediums, one elapsing over time, and another a static recording of the totality of it's events, Duality displays it's raw origins. Too often art throws a veil over an audience, present in a single form, polished and perfected, playing to the artist's plan. The element of artist's hand is obscured in the materials it has shaped. In Duality, the artist's hand is presented in literal record as an object of fine art.

In one the material is wax, in another light. In essence they are the same, wrapped into a package greater than either separate entity alone. Inside the process of crafting art is the art itself, exposing the dual nature of the artist, his work, and his methods. Fusing the components yields an interpretation of art as an event rather than a product, existing around us and transpiring through a framework developed in our individual aesthetics.

Intelligence determines meaning, and reason frames our world into comprehension. Grasping through a cloud of unknowing is a constant unraveling of decisions. Our agile flickering through switches in our lives leaves behind physical objects, or procreated life. The paintings in Duality function the same way, a recording of time, and draw a parallel to our processes in life.

The fundamental question remains: what is the difference between viewing paint through a frame or through a screen? One is a replication of the other, one has texture and one does not. Both can elicit the same emotional response. The defining element is time, one exposes it, and one contains it. These subtle differences are interplayed in Duality, to assist the audience in recognizing the impulses behind physicality. Imperfection is a constant in life, so perfect art couldn't exist, yet it is always being strived for. A recording though, is in a way perfect since it did not happen any other way. Presenting the dual elements of process and result degrades the idea of a work being perfect, is is more an accepted possibility within infinite outcomes. The painting could not have unfolded any other way, the video proves why it exists. Notions of time and space, combined with abstract reasoning, help us determine what we observe and link the two elements of Duality inexorably.