My work belongs to the future because
I include the future in my work.
Art of our mad empire, overheated cultural delusions, lethal technology and destructive class.
Art as though there was a culture for which to make art. -- John Sheridan
Mahatma Gandhi asked what he thought about Western culture answered
that it would be a good idea. It still applies to the 'culture' in which
we find ourselves, which, as the imperial American economic machine slides toward
the future, our social mindset slides as quickly back toward 1900 (or
900).
What's it to be a visual artist in this place (California - or cyberspace
- both of which appear anesthetically synonymous)? Why why
make art at all? Does anyone in the San Francisco Bay Area care what any artist
does? Does the overstimulated yet bored, money mad, violent, domineering society we have created even deserve art?
I would answer further on the pages of this web site, allowing the artwork to
ask and answer. Here, I only say that I am compelled to create art
because it is important, if there is to be any real society, to create as highly
evolved and honest communication as possible which is not under the domination of others
and yet which is for them as much as for its maker.
Art is the logical conclusion of Western culture. Art gives an ultimate perspective
on all other activities and beliefs: science, technology, religion, philosophy, government, commerce, violence.
It attains this perspective by virtue of its wild unpredictability and the freedom and
ability to reinvent itself at any moment in time. And thus escape our cultural tyranny. Art partially redeems a fatally, grotesquely materialistic
society - by allowing individuals an honest, imaginative space to speak about the world.
I create because art is the only way to give myself the power to apply every mode
of thought - emotion, logic, intuition, dreams, mystical insight, humor and even prejudice
- to every other mode of thought. The result is a dynamic, non-hierarchical and non-linear expression
unlike any other which places great value on the artist's individual perspective, and places
equally great responsibility to create a purely inspired, uncorrupted
and timeless experience for the viewer, especially the viewer of the future. Art
is not a commodity, it is an ultimate act of faith.
All symbolic
complexities lie within this activity. Let others please the upper classes with
well-crafted, soporific decoration which flatters dominant and neurotic
class prejudices, and the unevolved and generally uninspired
cultural 'gatekeepers'of the art world. I am after something else, much
more powerful, far-reaching and longer lived (because much more deeply embedded
in the subconscious history of images, projecting them into the future).
I hope the following pages, images, thoughts and essays I've
written are taken in the spirit they are given - which is the pure search for real
meaning - looking intently at yet in laughing opposition to an often decadent, forgettable,
violent, two-faced and materialist society. It is the society in which we live, must
face and change.
