Dec 8th 2016

Steven Green: Scapes, Land and City

@ Uncommon Ground

3800 N. Clark St. Chicago, IL 60613

Opening Thursday, December 8th, from 6PM - 8PM

On view through Sunday, February 12th

ARTIST STATEMENT

My professional life as an artist has always been process oriented. Early in my career, it was the nonrepresentational image derived from the use of materials or the process of multiple layering of the art materials in which the image would emerge. In the last eighteen years this same process orientation is the means that my current land and city scape images occur. When asked,” What is my source for the image?” I need to mentally pause to explain that the process of starting from a place of nothing, or one can say the blank paper, canvas, or panel surface is my source. From this starting point I attempt to remove all images from my mind and begin as rapidly or non-consciously as possible. Through this process of application and interpretation, layer upon layer of art material is applied until a final image emerges. Another perspective can be quoted from John Daido Loori’s, “The Zen of Creativity”, about the Zen aesthetic. “…In no mind there is no intent. The activity, whatever it may be, is not forced or strained. The art just slips through the intellectual filters, without conscious effort and without planning. This functioning of no mind is sometimes called the action of no action. This is the Taoist concept of wu-wei: a continuous stream of spontaneity that emerges from the rhythm of circumstances.”  The phrase, “…without conscious effort and without planning…” is the key to developing the ultimate, in my case, land and city scape image. My recent artwork has begun to explore a new image, “the city”. I have discovered on the most recent large scale paintings that the same process of discovering form and rhythm occurs with both the city as well as natural landscape.

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