Artist Statement at Still Standing Display

Perceptive perspective

Is your destination an illusion?

In your aimless meandering are you exploring,

Or escaping from the shelter that became your confinement?

Has your stabilizing anchor become the albatross that holds you down?

Does your protective mask blind you?

Have your braces become your obstacles?

Have your sanctified boundaries become insurmountable limitations?

Has your desire become impotent obsession?

Do you feel safe in the darkness or the light?

Are you safe or STIFLED?

Has the sweetness you once craved begun to make you nauseous?

Is it too complacent to compete with the obstacles we all must overcome?

After your escape and celebrated freedom,

Were you lost?

Opposing forces shifting, shape our world.

We move between, around and among them.

Obstacles fall before us and around us.

Perception stagnates in the façade.

In the shadow of momentum’s change

Art is the power to influence perspective.

slk

ARTIST STATEMENT

Do not confront the simple darkness that holds us as we contemplate

the moments of the closing day and anticipate the promise of tomorrow. 

Confront the suffocating ashes of disillusion and despair that deny Today.

Hope and despair exist in the same moment. 

The dual nature of perspective gives me a choice.

Art gives me the power to document the balance. 

It allows me to record the simultaneous existence of both. 

Balance is necessary to compete against the unknown thing that feeds 

on our forgotten dreams and burns the bridges to our achievements. 

It is the unknown thing that forces us to exchange our hope for drudgery

as it blinds us to the grand, fleeting moments of grace that happen in an instant. Without the stability to perceive Grace, life is just motion looking for a place to rest. 

This work is not about observing moments of grace. 

It is about living them. 

slk