Artist Statement:
The painting is not a mirror! It does not simply reflect my thoughts and emotions, my world or my culture. It may parallel those realities. It may have some organic relationship with those realities but, it exists in a form that has been born separate from those realities. It exists in a form that cannot be re-created or even properly described in another media. The good news is that the painting has a life of its own. But what is it saying?
I construct with a varied vocabulary of abstraction and representation, of changing styles and techniques. The imagery is discovered and replaced and often reborn. Images come like flashes, and are thrown into a new world of color, mark and surface, without full regard to their narrative implications. These stories are born of process and mood and the process gives birth to layers of association and inference, which then gives rise to narrative interpretations. The works are always narrative, inherently narrative in nature. But what is the story telling us?
So the painting is a visual myth, but to what end? It is a story which I initiate, but do not fully own. The characters which I have provided a stage for, are not fully under my control. I have given up control over these narratives. Any revelation is born during the process and lives in the work. While the works are fragmented and ever-changing. and the myth is odd and perhaps incomplete, the painting still has a life of its own. Perhaps the story it tells has more to reveal than first appears, certainly more than I have words to describe.
Mike Holsomback
Holsomback
Drawing / Painting / Multimedia / Collage / Assemblage
Copyright © Mike Holsomback. All rights reserved.