1) in my recent work, The expression has neither disappeared nor fully announced itself. It has become visible as resistance.. this is what I term “suppressed expression.”
If everything could simply be expressed exactly as experienced, there would be little need for art.
Art exists partly because something cannot quite get through.
The gesture is where suppression becomes visible, yet not fully Explicit. This allows for the viewer to add meaning as well as other multiplicities.
It is not silence. It is expression under pressure.
2) Suppressed does not mean absent
Something can be strongly present without becoming a recognizable image, statement, or symbol.
A gesture can feel urgent without depicting anything.
A darkening of color can carry intensity without saying anger.
A distortion can suggest a bodily or emotional force without representing a body.
The expression is there, but it hasn’t been completely translated into a determinate meaning.
I have been moving toward an art in which expression is present but not fully released into explicit form.
How little form is necessary before something begins to appear?
The interesting territory is where intention creates the conditions, and then intention withdraws.
The swamp is particularly powerful for it is already a place where form refuses to stabilize. It fluctuates accordingly;
Water / land.
Growth / decay.
Visibility / obscurity.
Organic form / abstraction.
Stillness / movement.
Presence / absence.
The task becomes less: “How do I represent the swamp?” more: “How much can I allow the swamp to happen through the painting?”
3) The deepest paradox:
The artist wills the relinquishment of will.
One has to work extraordinarily hard—composition, material, attention, revision, restraint—to arrive at something that cannot itself be willed.
If you willed it,—you’ve already destroyed it.
That is the paradox.
