My Artist's Statement

Written Picture Project: Quick Overview. 
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The "Written Picture" project is a series paintings focused on abstraction and an effort to push visual language. The series began with my idea to paint a book, capturing the essence of ancient texts in an abstract and contemporary manner.  I paint dashes moving from left to right, mimicking text.  The overall feeling of these paintings is of a busy space that somehow still remains quiet and ordered.  I mean for them to transformational and spiritual, while remaining mysteriously ambivalent.  You must come to them without judgement or preconceptions and experience them as visual phenomena.  Think of them as symphonies for the eye.  Mostly, they have been done in watercolor, but recently I have begun creating some larger pieces using acrylic paints.  

The Written Picture Project 

I happen to love old books; I mean really old books.  Ancient manuscripts and calligraphic works have such a sense of both beauty and mystery about them.  Those old and ancient tomes have a musty, but not unpleasant smell, and there is a physical, as well as spiritual, weight to them.  They creak when you open them, and the pages are stiff and brittle.  Then there is the writing.  Those handwritten letters scrawling across the page are enticing, especially when they are in a foreign language or in such a dense state as to be no longer be legible by our modern eyes.  Then you, the reader, must make up the content, intuiting the meaning from the images and deciding for yourself what is written.  Those old books often leave one with the feeling that if you could just decipher the symbols, a great wisdom would be imparted.

And so it was that with my love of calligraphy and old texts, I decided to paint a book.  I don't mean to paint images or illustrations in a book, but rather, to paint the letters or the feeling of the letters, to try to recreate that sense of mystery and beauty that I have found in ancient writing.  This began with a small sketchbook and some watercolors.  I started working across the pages of the sketchbook with little hash marks, moving from left to right.  As I worked, I would space the marks at irregular intervals, mimicking clusters of words.  Then I began to add washes of color, and eventually abstract symbols.  This series has now broadened into separate paintings and continues to grow.

The paintings are focused on abstraction and belong in the realm of Modern art, with their emphasis on spirituality and feeling.  They hearken to the works of Abstract Expressionist, Mark Rothko or even the field paintings of Milton Resnick, who put such emphasis on texture and surface.  Perhaps there is some Cy Twombly in there with his calligraphic swirls and idiosyncratic marks. Like other Modern works, I want the viewer to be absorbed by the image, to be drawn in and captivated, while letting go of preconceptions and the desire for tangible and linear images.  I mean them to be transformational and uplifting, while remaining utterly silent and calm. 

The symbols in these paintings seem familiar.  They feel like recognizable religious symbols, but they defy a specific religious interpretation.  Rather, they convey the mystery of the universe in a non-secular fashion.  They are meant as spiritual markers or guideposts.  What's more, they allow for a solid place for the eye to rest and bring order to the image. 

While these paintings are abstract, there are also elements of landscape that enter them.  As a longtime resident of the southwest, the desert terrain, mountains, and sky permeate my life.  The colors of the desert enter my work unbidden and speak of nature and the environment.  The southwest is filled with earthy tones of gray, green, and brown.  It is a vast place that seeps into one’s soul. 
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I continue to explore this idea of the written picture and, so far, I am finding it to have almost limitless possibilities.  It's exciting to be working in my studio and seeing where this thread will take me. 

-Bruce Black.

Artistic Philosophy 

​We all have different people inside us, different personalities.  We are, at alternating times, a combination of a scared child, a responsible adult, a warrior, an angry psychopath, a loving soul, a shallow and selfish human, and a giving and spirit loving person of faith.  As our lives fill with the endless tasks and responsibilities of modern life, our attention is pulled in myriad directions, and it becomes increasingly difficult to be who we really want to be, our best selves.

Our best self is that part of us that yearns for a wholeness and a purpose.  It happens when we reach out to others to give comfort, and it happens when we walk in the woods and listen to the wind.  Our best self is that person in each of us that is connected to spirit and at peace with the world.  Our best self is when we are without judgement of ourselves or others and are in a state of calm meditation. 

This is where art has always entered my life.  Art has been a way to reconnect and to find balance.  There is something wonderful about the process of painting that leads to a sense of ease.  You begin with an empty and pure canvas, and then you create discord and chaos.  Gradually, over time, you work that discord into harmony and order.  It is a highly satisfying and meditative practice.  Sitting in my studio and working quietly on a painting never fails to revitalize my spirit. 

 Nature has also played a great role in my life.  The outdoors calls to me and soothes me in a way that going to church soothes so many.  In my paintings, there is generally a sense of landscape.  As much as I may attempt to work abstractly, the landscape seems to insert itself somehow.  The warm colors of the southwest permeate my paintings.  You see the reds of the Sedona cliffs and the greens of the Palo Verde trees.  Greys and tans and ochres are all abundant in my work and come from nature. 

With my abstract paintings, I am attempting to establish a feeling, usually a feeling of meditation or mystery.  I want the paintings to call to you and pull you in.  I want your eyes to travel the image's surface, lighting on the bright parts and being sucked into the darker tones.  I want your eyes to experience the painting in the same manner that your ears experience a symphony.  That is, without judgement or linear understanding, but rather with pure emotion and experience.  I want the paintings to fill your soul and sit quietly in your heart. 

The paintings, of course, can't do all the work.  You, the viewer, must open your heart to the paintings and work with them.  You must suspend judgement and the notion that the eye must build recognizable forms where none are intended.  Allow yourself to just look and absorb the shapes and colors.  Then, look away for a while and come back to the image later on.  See if it has changed, or if perhaps you have changed.  Greet the image anew and allow it, once again, to fill your spirit.  If we work together on this, me the artist, and you the viewer, I will tell you, we can change the world. 

I hope that my paintings find you and bring you the joy and warmth with which they are intended. 

​-Bruce Black
 
 

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