STRUGGLE AND TROPHIES - WHAT MAKES ME TICK

What makes me tick?

I think what motivates me lies inside me and this is invisible and intangible.  I make art to make this universe visible and tangible.  Although I refer to the visible world directly or indirectly when making art, outside form is perceived, filtered and changed according to forces in my subconscious.

What are these forces that work their way from the depths and are always driving my hands to make marks or shape forms?  The answer is perhaps manifest in the piles of sketches that I have been turning out continuously for decades.  I consider this as more telling than many of my paintings.  In fact I have been trying hard to catch up with my drawings, because I know that my sketches are outbursts, hot from the bubbling recesses of my inner self.

These show how I have been arduously inching my will beyond various limitations.  This has driven me to create situations that make flashes of intuition possible.  These flashes, in the shape of sketches, I treasure and keep in retrieval systems.

My experience as an artist has taught me that art is shaped by necessity.  Even a seemingly insignificant mark creates a particular need for another mark to complement, enhance, change or obliterate it.  When I consider all the possible pressures that build up inside, I am convinced that these trigger off an ever expanding creativity.

Seizing on various triggers has become my favourite game when making art.  For me art is invention, an inventory of form, a record of mental and spiritual activity, mostly unpredictable, where unconscious scanning and will to form, conjure magic.  Behind all this is a struggle, but the trophies are worth it.

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