A Closer Look: Gnats

I do a lot of art, and that might be an understatement. And while that's all great and good and makes me feel like I'm really doing something, sometimes some really solid pieces get lost in the fray...when you have a pile of thirty paintings in your apartment, you're bound to lose track of some of them.

So anyway, I thought I'd try to keep that from happening too often by every-once-in-a-while going back and taking a look at one of those "weeknight paintings" that I tend to gloss over more quickly...This time, we'll take a look at A Swarm of Gnats Just Before Summer

I think I'll tackle this on a more basic level. The idea of much of my work, this included, is to convey the human experience. When you experience something, you have the visual, but that's really a small percentage of what's happening. You listen, you smell, you feel (touch-wise), you feel (emotion-wise)...it's a much more complete experience than most people realize. Therefore, displaying an event on canvas can be somewhat difficult. I try to transfer a multi-dimensional, multi-sense experience to a 2-D surface without losing anything. In reality, it's impossible. Something will be left out in translation, but my goal is to represent as much as I can.

This piece is about sitting near Lake Michigan just before summer hits when the gnats begin to swarm. Yes it's warm. Yes it's beautiful out. Yes the flowers and the lake are seen. But there's also a buzzing. There's wind. There's the pricks from the grass. With my work, through the mark-making, scratching, symbolism, and color, I am trying to convey all the sensory experience...trying to imitate all of what you actually experience. The paintings are visual, but they are visuals referencing the total experience...