An Artist's Curiosities/

Ostranenie

oil paint on polystyrene

One day while painting, I was struck by the beauty of the leftover paint on my palette. I immediately started to draw and paint individual little sections of this paint mass. As I started working with the pieces of paint I felt the absurdity of using such material for my subject matter. After all, the paint left on the palette is leftovers, remains, garbage. So at times, this work seems to me to have an affinity with Dada. From a different perspective, working with the pieces of paint became a meditation on the overlooked details of life, on seeing the world in a grain of sand.

Although this work is strictly representational, it appears to some to be abstract. That inherent contrast interests me. I've also enjoyed the shift that occurs for some when viewing the paintings and drawings. At first people have taken the work for anatomical drawings of musculature, paintings of vegetation, or even spacecraft. But on closer look sometimes there is a moment of confusion or uncertainty. What am I looking at? The moment of reflection and uncertainty is one of my favorite things about showing this work. One of my original names for this series was Ostranenie, a word that means defamiliarization. It embodies the idea that art's task is to make the everyday seem new or strange, and so allow the viewer to pause and step out of daily time.