Studio Axioma - Hive, Bombs, & JellyFish

Painting made from 2006 and completed in April of 2007 for my BFA Thesis solo exhibition.

Random actions and gestural elements are methods of creating and exploring interesting artistic conditions to begin my work. The random actions become elements that create shapes and lines that repeat to give balance and/or harmony. Lines, shapes, and colors in my work create a field of visual play, that I constantly react to and project into with a theme or subject matter. At first, the gestures on the surface are motivated by the discovery and exploration of their intrinsic aesthetic values. Theme and a subject emerge out of contemplating and reacting to gesticulatory images that start to emerge, making me the conduit and interpreter of what the subject can be.

For these twelve works, I aimed to try to blur the perception of the subtle shift between macrocosm and microcosm, and the dichotomy of conception and representation of a subject.

The subject for this series of paintings was the role and purpose of the human creature on earth. I tried to express the caricatured aspects of how humans interact with the environments that they create. I wanted the viewer to revisit the attitudes and the reality of the chaos that people experience when operating in our natural environment.

Positive and negative interactions between natural forms, people, and issues about our position in the natural environment became the subject matter. The hives represent basic structures created by nature that can be both physically and ideologically compartmentalizing.

The bombs are parodies of atoms or particles which are the awesome driving forces of nature but, in human hands, they are only valued for their chemical or destructive potential. Explosions are a category of phenomena that are dualistic, being both creative and destructive in different figurative and literal contexts.

The jellyfish conveyed the banal and naive primordial aspects of humans. However, all three symbols represent a dichotomy in humanity's past, present, and future.

Martin Kippenberg stated that artists should reject the traditional idea that they should work to achieve a signature style. Instead, an artist should create a persona that shifts in multiple directions at once.

I aspire to find truths as an artist and not just practice to be skillful in my practice. I hope to present ideas that transcend any single medium and create an artistic persona that grows in multiple directions at once.

Originally written in 2007 and rewritten in 2024.
Angel Axioma.