"Cathexis I"
Marko Shuhan
Accord, NY
oil on canvas 57 x 48
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Working primarily in oil-based paints and glazes with a variety of application techniques, my large gestrual abstract paintings equally embrace both process and image. For me, the painting is a living phenomenon - communication and physical interaction with the image occur simultaneously throughout the entire painting process. My paintings follow the development of pre-visualized thought with the climax being the actualization of a particular concept or idea. Thoughts and ideas influenced by family, personal experience, history, music, and current social climates all occupy prominent places on this vast creative playing field.
I begin a painting with some basic gestures to a thought - not unlike notions a journalist jots down in a notebook, or improvising notes a musician might play. Then, through exhaustive methods of gestural drawing, layering, glazing, scraping, and scratching the paint surface, I develop dynamic contrasts between opposites such as addition and elimination, surface and depth, structure and fragmentation. These dichotomies in the cognitive creative process reside at the very core of our own human evolution and spiritual growth. The resulting artwork creates a visceral experience with the viewer: a soulful encounter with color, surface texture, dimensionality, and the ultimate expressive nature of paint.
Marko Shuhan