Statement
As a contemporary painter with modernist and formalist influences, my paintings celebrate flatness, color, and form. I believe in art for art's sake, as I believe in music for the sake of music. As a musician, sound itself is what’s crucial for me. As a painter, what is important is what we see, rather than any meaning outside what is in front of us. The meaning is the painting itself, its compositional characteristics such as color, form, line, and texture. That is what brings the emotional, mental, and physical experience to us; everything else is just the occasion. The picture is the most important thing for me, and I am not finished until the whole painting is working.
I believe that the future is made with pieces from the past; therefore, my paintings are a response to what’s already out there. My influences range from various art movements such as Abstract Expressionism, Color Field, and Minimalism. It has that open quality of Color Field painting, heavily-textured surface and gestural marks reminiscent of Abstract Expressionism, and geometric forms and limited color palette characteristic of Minimalism. In addition, I'm fascinated by the beauty and complexity of Roman and Egyptian frescoes and how we can encounter a temporal experience when we observe them carefully. I’m drawn by how they have decayed slowly for centuries, adding cracks and layers of colors that become part of the current stage of the work, creating a mesmerizing and atmospheric character, and representing the passing of time and transformation.
Naturally, because of my 15+ year music career, I'm intrigued by the connection between painting and music and how they feed each other in my work. Music, especially instrumental music, is an abstract experience, it is something that we don't see, but it affects us in many ways as we listen to it. On the other hand, abstract art is something we see but remains mysterious. Yet, it influences us in multiple ways, just like music. Furthermore, I believe there are different degrees of abstraction. Some pieces can be more abstract than others in both music and art. Still, what matters is that they both can impact us in many ways.
As a musician, when I'm improvising or composing, I'm looking to make the music evolve and develop organically. I create musical compositions with melody, harmony, rhythm, timbre, and register, and every instrument and part of the composition is equally important to me. Everything needs to work together. The same principle applies to my paintings, but with color, form, line, and texture instead of musical elements. I see my paintings as an extension of my music and vice versa. The conceptual processes are incredibly alike, and my goal is the same in both worlds, which is to create something interesting, beautiful and profound that works as a whole and evokes some kind of emotional, mental, and/or physical response in the listener/viewer.