#1 Subterranean Stream
Mineral Series — Abstract Matter
This series depicts matter. However, it is not matter that actually exists on Earth. It is abstracted matter.
Until now, I have been painting light itself. In those cases, the subject was a light source that glowed on its own. What I am painting in this series is not the light source, but the secondary light reflected off matter. Light only takes on an expression when it touches the surface of matter. Wet surfaces shine sharply, dry surfaces absorb light, and coarse surfaces scatter light into fine particles. Differences in texture, diversity of reflection. Far more complex expressions appear there than in the light source itself. I want to capture that moment.
However, what is depicted is not specific matter. It is not rock, ore, or water. It is matter that exists nowhere. Even so, the matter within the frame has weight, possesses complex shapes, and shows movement. Cracks, corrosion, sedimentation, flow. The expressions that matter shows over a long period of time and the expressions that light shows for only an instant. The two meet on a single canvas.
I wish to manifest the expressions possessed by such matter on the canvas.
Artist's Statement
I painted water flowing underground. It is water flowing like a hidden vein of ore. It cannot be seen from the surface—this is a painting that sees through the earth.
On a pale stone ground, water sprays up in sharp droplets. Each particle flashes as it catches the light, fine cracks run across the canvas like fissures in bedrock, and dark sediment collects at the bottom. The most intense moment in the series. Matter captured in the midst of movement.
Things that flow underground usually leave no trace on the surface. We walk above them without knowing. Here, for just an instant, the hidden flow breaks the surface and reveals itself. Not as a river in some landscape, but as matter that exists nowhere, matter abstracted from everywhere. The weight of the water, the sharpness of the spray, the darkness carried up from below. The canvas captures that moment when the invisible becomes visible.
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