Statement from Four Artists/New Directions exhibition

by Gary John Gresl

We have a world-view unlike any previous generation, and, in an art historical sense, our perspective on the created array proceeding and surrounding us is marvelous. For one who studies it, it need not be bewildering.

This 20th century Earth, with its blend of sophisticated and primitive thought, with its advanced technologies and ancient religions, with the network of world-wide communication open to those seeking information, finds us making choices among increasingly complicated experiences, or seeking what is basic and simple.

My personal interpretation of the process of my painting, and the resultant paintings themselves, recognizes a blend of the sophisticated and the naive, the advanced and the primitive, the conscious and the unconscious, the spontaneous and the thoughtful.

Art, by human hand and intelligence, is an extension of life...that is, an "expression of energy and an organization of matter". I want to extend my own sensibilities, and create things which I have never seen before. For me, this must be through abstraction, through nonobjective compositions and invented forms.

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