Painters and artists take the meat of the phenomenal world, especially those people, places and things that speak to them in poetry, viscerally, and sing that poetry through the work they make. So in this way I'm thankful that Kelledy and Sarah have revealed that personal story of who their influences have been. Not only is the acknowledgement telling of who we are as people and artists, in terms of the decisions we daily make, but it is often a sign of what we seek to escape. The most powerful effect my influences, particularly in painting, my field, have on me is one of repulsion. I want to get away from the sort of pre-determined path of my work, represented by these insidious influences that remind me that I am derivitive. There is some consolation in looking at the development of many of my influence's careers and acknowledging that in their beginnings, they were also derivative of their surroundings in the art world. The essential quality that the majority of my influences have had is that they are able to embody in their paintings the unique burdens or aspirations in their spiritual life. The context of the artist's life has helped me to understand the work and make it that much richer, but with the greatest of my influences, their story is implicit and viscerally apparent in the visual language of their material alone.
Inventors and those whose imagery accompanied the times they were in:
And those who transcend their means, materials, and constraints:
I went for a year without listening to music as an experiment. I learned to listen to the wind.
