Everything feels quiet and still tonight, a little sleepy, and yet here I am.
I've spent the day preparing for my first artist talk. While it's generally not difficult for me to talk about my work, it's been challenging to come up with an approach that enables me to coherently and concisely explain, in 30 minutes or less, the dramatic changes in my life and art over the past few years. Speaking to a corporate audience (ie. the employees of Daimler Financial), I seem compelled to begin with: "I am one of you".
Wanting to explain the influence of my former life (as a New York corporate lawyer) on my art, I have decided that the premise for my talk will be Susan Stewart's assertion that "no artwork can be completed without reception." Although I never created art until after I quit my life as a lawyer (and it was a whole life that I quit, not just a job), I had always sought out the experience of art. If art is understood as a sort of collaboration between maker and receiver, then it seems less surprising that I could emerge from the rational, linguistic minutiae of the law into the expressive, poetic realm of the visual arts. Indeed, I believe an artist resides in most of us.
As an artist now, I am fascinated with the seductive nature of images - the fantasies they induce, the desires they stoke, the frailties they reveal - and the role the viewer plays in perpetuating their power.
I've spent the day preparing for my first artist talk. While it's generally not difficult for me to talk about my work, it's been challenging to come up with an approach that enables me to coherently and concisely explain, in 30 minutes or less, the dramatic changes in my life and art over the past few years. Speaking to a corporate audience (ie. the employees of Daimler Financial), I seem compelled to begin with: "I am one of you".
Wanting to explain the influence of my former life (as a New York corporate lawyer) on my art, I have decided that the premise for my talk will be Susan Stewart's assertion that "no artwork can be completed without reception." Although I never created art until after I quit my life as a lawyer (and it was a whole life that I quit, not just a job), I had always sought out the experience of art. If art is understood as a sort of collaboration between maker and receiver, then it seems less surprising that I could emerge from the rational, linguistic minutiae of the law into the expressive, poetic realm of the visual arts. Indeed, I believe an artist resides in most of us.
As an artist now, I am fascinated with the seductive nature of images - the fantasies they induce, the desires they stoke, the frailties they reveal - and the role the viewer plays in perpetuating their power.