Reception for David Carter at National Harbor TOMORROW!
David Carter— Drawings & Paintings
Currently on exhibit through July 3, 2010
Reception: Tuesday, June 8, 6:30-8:30 pm
Currently on exhibit through July 3, 2010
Reception: Tuesday, June 8, 6:30-8:30 pm
Artist’s Statement
There are worse torments than reading an artist’s statement. Some things ostensibly written for other people to read are even more tedious and less satisfying than a typical artist’s statement. Insurance policies, for example. The writings of Hegel come to mind. But statements like this one are usually high on the list.
Verbal explanations about visual experience often seem to miss the point. We (artists) know that. We’ve read our statements, and we don’t like them either. So, we clam up. It feels like less harm done that way. “Silence is so accurate,” Rothko said.
But there’s just no separating thought and sight. That’s my premise. We think with our eyes; we see with ideas. Words do what they can. And the images in my paintings are born of ideas – or questions – that, frankly, are difficult to express in any form. No mystery or distortion is invented along the way for artistic value; it’s all there from the start. The struggle is to be direct, clear, and vivid in expressing notions that by nature resist description, shed clarity and elude precision.
And yet the questions expressed in my paintings are questions anyone might find familiar. Familiar, but regarded as unimportant. Or not regarded at all. Some may have occurred to us first (and last) when we were children. Since then we’ve probably come to dismiss them as mysteries so fundamental, and so difficult, they should be ignored. We are fish; they become the water we’re unaware of.
Whatever your take on these images might be, I hope one or two stick with you.
If they give you something to still think about later – that would be even better.
The Art League at National Harbor
120 American Way
The Art League at National Harbor
120 American Way
Oxon Hill, MD
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