Saturday, March 15, 2014

About time for a new artist's statement: 

Perceptual painting is and always has been a philosophical endeavor.  To stand before tangible reality and to express that purely human experience in visual, physical terms is to be a mirror for the world. With each stroke of paint, we give our perceptions substance.  Truly, this is the wonder of the painter’s art- that paint may be stuff and sensation simultaneously. This element of transfiguration speaks to the duality of the human condition as well; an awareness of our physicality, our corporeality, is an inextricable element of our experience, our sensory makeup.

My current work seeks to draw attention to the phenomenological inquiry that painting from life represents. Self-portraits have figured largely in this endeavor.  Whether in the studio or in the landscape, I have pulled back to include the mirror and its surroundings in these works; thus, the painting is not merely an image of my self, but of its reflection.  Embedding this perception of self in the midst of other witnessed phenomena allows the work as a whole to stand as a transfiguration, a meta self-portrait composed of successive, subjective decisions. In overtly depicting not just an image of my body, but the phenomenological experience of looking at my own body, I seek to address the elements of mediation and meditation intrinsic to perceptual painting.

                                                                                    -Matthew Meyer 2014  

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