Occupy

     The various shapes and directions that art has taken throughout the years is what makes today one the most exciting moments to be an artist ever. Artists have never been freer and have never had as many resources or as wide a range of possible references to create art in history. The rich variety of the experiences of the past have enable artists to break into the fascinating world of visual expression in a way inconceivable one hundred years ago. Art making has never been as ambiguous as it is today. To be a contemporary artist and to express the metamorphosis that art has gone through one must take into consideration all that has been explored before.     This concept has always been my concern and it is with that in mind that I base my art investigation. The current subject of my creative research draws upon the engagement of the work of the masters of baroque painting with the art produced in the twentieth century. In other words, it deals with the inherent antagonism of abstraction and figuration. By articulating with these traditions I intend to build a unique body of work that collapses the edges between abstraction and representational painting.    My intent is explicit in my painting Occupy (please refer to image#1). It depicts a mythological serpent-like creature attacking and strangling a biomorph being mother in a epic scene. Part of the pictorial elements were intentionally made not too conspicuous, or abstract while it was my decision to limit the figuration to a few essential features. This is a painting about action, movement and emotion. As far as subject matter goes, it was my goal to create pictorial response to events that humanity has recently witnessed. While the world is dealing with economic upheaval and political turmoil, where people live the imminence of a new major natural disaster and the threats of a new revolution or war. My goal was to create a depiction of the despair, fears and struggle of people all over the world; a statement about the human condition in the twenty first century. Greek art has always been an influence in my work. This painting in particular was inspired by the Hellenistic sculpture titled “Lacoon and his two sons”. 
I seek to create paintings that challenge one’s perception of figuration and comment on aspects of contemporary life.
As an artist I seek to explore the achievements of the past, connect it to the present to build the future.