Finding the surreal in all of us is not difficult. It is all around us. It is in the works that we have created for ourselves. It is in our everyday lives. Naturally, this is how I communicate on the canvas. I take the organizational structures of my environment, thoughts and influences and organize them on to a canvas. My choice of color creates the mood for each subject in the piece.
Surreal oil painting is challenging to create. I typically have no idea what the end result will be when I start a surrealistic piece. Over time they reveal themselves to me. I spend a lot of time staring at these during the development. Experiments with shapes, elements and paint application along with the visions I get during the process are often exhausting. I bring in elements that I have used in other paintings or experiments, and see how they work together. At that point, surrealism turns into a language and the oil painting will start to speak to me.
I have enjoyed painting each of these surreal pieces but it is a very painstaking process. These take months to create, in a few cases, years. Rarely do I know what they mean or where they come from however I am strongly moved to paint these and always have a few going at the same time. Some how that helps the process of breaching different dimensions in order to paint these. |