ARTIST'S STATEMENT
-My life's mission
in this world-
As a painter/
multi-medium artist, my artwork involves strong expressive mark
making as my way
of honestly interpreting the world we live in. By randomly
applying the paint
in some way, I want to make a more poignant image. There is
the element of
disorder and excess in my work. I am interested in the concept of
the 'primitive' in
art.
I always endeavour
to work with a variety of different mediums including paint,
photographs, sand,
soil, dried grass, feathers, plaster, pastel, paper,
cardboard, cloth,
rope, canvas, ink, bitumen paint, barbed wire, images from
newspapers and
magazines and other sources, maps, fragments of wood, bricks
and shattered
glass, both printed and hand written text, and other found
objects to produce
small to large scale, semi-abstract to abstract paintings,
and a ongoing
series of artist books.
I incorporate materials
into my work that has a tendency to slowly
decay. I like the
concept of an artwork slowly decomposing; symbolising that all
things material
has a lifespan, whereas the things that are not seen are eternal.
Also as a human
being I see myself as part of the decaying process, and that which
is eternal. I am
exploring the concept of pictorial representations
of remembered
experiences - of the material itself holding an
expressive power
and by its materiality - providing a language in itself.
I am also
incorporating words; word fragments, numbers, and symbols into
a series of my
artwork.
I maintain an
ongoing archive of resource material in my art practice. The
resource material
consists of both visual diaries and journals that I began in
1992. I work from
my visual diaries and journals as part of the pre-planning for
my paintings. The
visual diaries consist of any image I can find, and then
re-constructed
into montage. I also make marks directly onto my visual diaries
with the use of
paint and other mediums. The journals are primarily a written
record of my own
thoughts and feelings with a collection of various everyday
fragments
assembled into montage.
I have always been
an activist on local, national, and international issues.
Through painting I
have this need to rebel against the conservative and
politically
correct. I want to communicate visually in some way the human condition. I
believe that art
can make a positive difference in the world today.
If other people
are willing to dialogue with my artwork and be
enriched by the
experience, then I know I have done my
task. My work has
always been untitled because I do not want to
give them an
objective context.
I do have an
ongoing list of mentor artists (both contemporary and non-contemporary)
that I refer to
including Frida Kahlo, Jackson Pollock, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Anselm
Kiefer, Andy
Warhol, Francisco Goya, Pablo Picasso, Vincent Van Gogh, Francis Bacon,
Ian Fairweather,
Franz Kline, Robert Rauschenberg, Kurt Schwitters, Alberto Burri,
Yves Klein, Mark
Rothko, Richard Larter, Jochen Kuhn, Jasper Johns, John Hartfield,
John Olsen, Ann
Thomson, Jeffrey Makin, Gordon Bennett, Susan Norrie, Peter Booth,
Tony Tuckson, Fred
Williams, Ralph Balson, Robert Motherwell, David Wojnarowicz,
Willem De Kooning,
Jean Dubuffet, Andrew Norris, Sidney Nolan, Arnulf Rainer,
Gerhard Richter,
Romare Bearden, Rosalie Gascoigne, and Colin McMahon.
By the Artist
Michael Adams
23/08/2006