My work is focused on having and creating uplifting experiences. Both in the work and the activities and relationships that surround it, I feel most successful when I am letting in the color and light.
It took me a long time to realize that at its base art for me is a form of food that allows me to live my life more fully. Without it I starve – with it I thrive. At its best it is a food that directly feeds my spirit. In its freest form it is meditation. When held up to my fellows, it is a form of community building and a celebration of what is best in our desire for connectedness. In its ideal form it uplifts.
I engage the world around me through multiple pursuits. As a husband and father. As a resident of a small community surrounded by nature. As a former San Franciscan and with close ties to my citied past. As a coffee fanatic. As a friend with a dorky and irreverent sense of humor. As a CEO concerned with using business as a tool to make the human experience more sustainable. As an artist.
As well as meditating, creative acts are a cumulative force in shaping a lifestyle for me – the Art Life. The Art Life is the intentional practice of increasing creative approaches to all aspects of my life. From gardening to business to parenting to painting – the more creativity I add, the more my life becomes artful, the more artful the better it seems to go.
The creative process mirrors the underlying flow of life on our planet, and reaching back for old spiritual metaphors I see meaning in the idea that we were created as both participants in and stewards of the garden of living things on our planet. In this sense, the best thing I can do is to create in a way that lifts life and its processes up.
Painting helps me keep this lifestyle and sense of purpose and meaning attuned.
When I show up to paint I feel drawn to five primary elements of the work.
Color – is a source of real joy and pleasure – to experience placing colors next to one another, to mix colors, to see others’ reactions to colors, to find combinations that uplift. Right now I work with a very broad pallet and pull in colors from multiple color makers and with the exception of black there is no color I shy from.
Mark making – is the tai chi of my work. Moving across large canvases with a certain fluid series of marks and shapes positively affects me – like dancing. It makes me feel like and artist in the way no other part of the work does. This is the primary driver for wanting to work on very large pieces because the dance of mark making is more engaging.
Balance – is important to me. I draw my inspiration for balance from primary ecosystems as they have achieved the greatest balance in their design. In the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica and the Redwoods around my home, I see a perfect balance of form and function – all of it beautiful in some way.
Scale – is a special consideration for me. I enjoy shapes and marks and representations that can be interpreted at multiple scales – i.e. is this shape a molecule, a flower bud or a star or all of them? I enjoy this flirtation with varied and simultaneous scale both as a creator of the work and as a viewer of it. It is also a somewhat ordered pathway into complexity that I enjoy both in art and life.
Open style – concerns or rules of style are less important in my work, but I am drawn to metaphors and archetypes in a way that is similar to my interest in multiple scales. I see an open style as being important to addressing the other elements of my work. I also enjoy playing along the line between abstraction and representation – it creates a complexity and openness in interpretation while giving some intellectual resting places for the viewer to regularly reorient while moving across scales and colors in the painting.
While I paint for myself and to improve the quality of my life and my well being as a person. I am grateful that others find some of the same things enjoyable as I do. If I am concerned at all with extrinsic motivators in my work it would be to lift up others in the experience viewing my work the way I am uplifted when I make the work. It’s like a really delicious piece of fruit you want to cut it in half and share with a friend – you are grateful to enjoy it but it is so enjoyable you feel compelled to make it a shared experience. The only other extrinsic motivator for how the work is being embraced is that I enjoy working large and would like to work larger. Unless I am going to roll them up and store them away, they need large public or private spaces. These two motivators have me engaging more seriously in the business of my art. I welcome any and all inquiries and dialogs.
Peace and Good Things,
Andrei
